IS the taxpayers’ wonderful, newly opened National Arboretum losing the plot on pricing?

It is fast developing a reputation for being costly beyond Katy Gallagher’s penny-pinching parking meters.

Recently CC heard about a long-standing advisory board member who had to abandon staging a charity evening there because of the cost.

Then in the past week, “CityNews” wanted to pass through this public space and do a photoshoot in the Village Centre. Sure can, says licensee Ginger Catering’s operations and events manager Nichole Stringer, that’ll be $1800 venue hire, thank you. Like we’re getting married.

Clearly well used to the sound of dropping jaws, she added: “Alternatively, you can do an outdoor shoot, however there are fees involved.” We didn’t ask.

Georgia hits the wall

WHEN “CityNews” stumbled across artist Georgia Goodnow, she was spray-painting a wall at her local shops in Ainslie. But don’t call the cops; she was commissioned to get creative out the back of eatery Pulp Kitchen, after a friend slipped her name to the owners.

Georgia enjoyed a lot of artistic freedom with the mural, she says, although the owners had a few stipulations.

“They wanted to have planes in it somewhere, because they like planes,” she says. “And jasmine vines, and they also wanted their logo in there, but that was all.”

The 18-year-old painter started using spray cans just two years ago.

“It’s so unlike other painting mediums because it allows you to do such big, public things,” she says.

Despite a steady flow of commissions and gigs doing live painting, such big, public things don’t pay all the bills, so Georgia also paints with kids at her job in a childcare centre.

Boy named sue

PICK me… Slater and Gordon lawyer Gerard Rees sent us an opportunistic piece of nausea in the guise of a “letter to the editor” in which he recites the legal principle that an eatery owes a duty to its patrons to provide a product fit for human consumption, blah, blah… then urges anyone affected in the recent Mother’s Day salmonella outburst to seek legal advice. Sigh.

The white stuff

A SHELF piled with dozens of loaves of white bread isn’t something you usually find in a doctor’s office, but that’s just what journalist Laura Edwards and snapper Brent McDonald stumbled across when entering the West Belconnen Health Co-op in Charnwood. It seems friendly, local grocers donate the bread to the medical centre for clients to take home with them, free of charge.

Whale of a time

THE “Skywhale” gets a workout in the Sydney “Telegraph”. Writer Tim Blair describes it as “the perfect symbol of our capital city – a bloated, gaseous, multi-breasted monster feeding those who dwell in its poisonous shadow while leeching off the rest of us.”

And if you think that’s bad enough, he mauls Centenary creative director Robyn Archer who, in defence of the controversial hot-air balloon said: “The connection with the centenary is ‘look at how many amazing people Canberra has produced over these years’.”

To which Blair sniffed: “Nothing says ‘look at how many amazing people Canberra has produced’ quite like a hideous airborne turtle with 10 tits.”

Sums on fences

EDUCATION Minister Joy Burch trumpets that those horrid, community excluding black fences around 56 public schools have reduced vandalism-related property damage from $606,668 to $282,684.

That’s a saving of $323,984 over three years or, when divided by 156 weeks and 56 schools, equals a mighty saving of $37.08 a week each. And the costs of the fences and ongoing maintenance is less? We don’t think so.

Pavement art

DESPITE the sense of foreboding as winter closes in, autumn in Canberra is always a time of joyous colour. A reader spotted this artistic assembly of autumn leaves on a damp pavement and thought them quite lovely. So do we.

Hmmms

WELCOME to the Royal Australian Mint, a beloved destination of visitors to Canberra where, laughingly, the cafe is closed on Saturday and Sunday.

MOOBLE, the eco-clothing store in Bailey’s Arcade, has blackboards outside heralding its “summer sale”.

ACT Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson’s post-Federal Budget commentary has him railing against “attacks on public service job cuts”. Think about it.

LOCAL cafe’s “closed” sign: “Shut happens”.

FORMER Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was in town as special guest for the 50th anniversary gala dinner of the Italo-Australian Club. His father, Alec, as Immigration Minister, opened the Forrest club in 1963.

DROLL reader’s note:  “Wouldn’t it have been great if the $340,000 for the Skywhale could have been put aside to run the hand-to-mouth Australian National Eisteddfod more professionally for the next 10-15 years?”

THE subject line says: “jhvjhb” and the summary reads: “hgv jhvg jhv jhv jhvg hjvg hjvg  vjh vvg v gh v”. Okay, so we click… to a press release about a solar cycle challenge. Didn’t see that coming. Trash.