MEET the ACT Mozzies, a group of junior fencers aged between seven and 13 who are representing the ACT in an international sporting event called the Koala Cup, to be held in Sydney over three days on the weekend of November 22, 23 and 24.

“These children are some of the nation’s best representative junior fencers with national rankings in the top 10 and are a credit to the ACT,” purrs proud team manager Letitia Abela.

The ACT has the second largest qualifying team with 26 fencers competing, a reflection, she says, of the huge rise in fencing at the junior level. Over the last seven years, fencing clubs in the ACT for juniors have grown from one club to five.

Praise be, the sign is saved! 

THE neglected, heritage Starlight Drive-in sign is to be resurrected near its original site in Watson.

“CityNews”, which has been campaigning for the 57-year-old neon sign for three years, hears that the owners of the Starlight Apartments – which were built on the site of the original ‘50s drive-in – will be voting to donate the sign, now lying rusting and neglected in an ACT Government depot in Fyshwick since falling off its rusted plinth in October last year, to slow-moving ACT Heritage.

The strata group’s executive committee is going to seek owners’ approval at its November 28 annual general meeting to have the sign donated on the basis of its being re-installed on Government land directly outside Starlight Apartments, which then excuses them from any further responsibility for cost.

But, if it’s to be moved from its original spot, why stay in Watson? Isn’t it time the National Sound and Film Archive took some interest?

Vote often

SUMMERNATS, Canberra’s annual street machine show, says it’s made it into the top 10 for the people’s choice section of Australia’s Favourite Event awards, where the “public votes for their favourite Aussie event; the event that earns their devotion and support”.

The “devotion and support” comes from fans being encouraged to vote “five times at once and multiple times per day”. Where’s the credibility in winning that kind of an award? We’ll know soon enough, voting closed on November 19.

Beyond our Ken 1. 

KEN Irvine, of Ziggy’s Fruit Markets, has been in fruit and veg for 45 years, but won’t say how old he is. He hates poor service and okra, collects BMWs and admits the most significant change to his business in the last year has been “getting rid of dead wood”. His favourite saying is: “That’s why I get the big bucks”.

He confesses all this and more in a revealing Q&A to support a trade newsletter’s announcement of  Ziggy’s Fyshwick winning the October Greengrocer of the Month Award against more than 250 fresh-food retailers across NSW and the ACT, the first award for a store in the Fyshwick Markets since 2005.

Beyond our Ken 2.

KEN Nichols, operations director of “The Canberra Times” and its former general manager from 2006 until July last year, is leaving the paper.

Its owner, Fairfax Media, recently repositioned the national capital’s daily from its prestigious metropolitan team with “The Sydney Morning Herald” and “The Age”, to its regional group with bedfellows such as the “Newcastle Herald” and the “Illawarra Mercury”.

Given the staff turmoil and turnover of the past year, Nichols was seen as a steadying, familiar face of the troubled paper among advertisers and the business community in Canberra. The line is that he’ll be there until “the transition”. To what though is not clear.

Down ‘Times’

MEANWHILE, here’s some more news “The Canberra Times” won’t tell its readers or advertisers – its own latest circulation figures from the September 30 quarterly audit, which saw its flagship Saturday edition down 9.6 per cent to 45,162, weekdays flopped another 7.4 per cent to 28,162 and Sundays are down 8 per cent to 28,808.

Re-cycle time

WHILE the frame is going nowhere, the wheels of this poor, vandalised cycle (right), shackled heavily to a bike rack in Bunda Street, Civic, have clearly gone to heaven. Reporter Stephen Easton took the photo.

Bushed for verse

IT’S been a while since anyone from the Bush Capital has had a sniff of the annual Bronze Swagman Award for written bush verse, which is held annually in Winton, in outback Queensland.

Now in its 42nd year, award organisers are calling for entries.

The ACT has a distant history of success with Frank McMahon, of Ainslie winning with “Hawthorn Pepper” in 1978. In the ‘90s June Foster, of Deakin, had “Cockatoo Clever” printed in the annual book. But there have been no Canberrans on the rostrum since Roy Wheeler, of Watson, scored runner-up in 1989 with “The Lost Steer”.

Entries for next year’s prize close on April 30 and can be downloaded, while enjoying poems from past years, from bronzeswagman.info