I LOVE Canberra’s public artworks. Former chief minister Jon Stanhope deserves full credit for investing in some amazing sculpture that brightens Canberra’s streets and gets us thinking.

Although I started as a sceptic, I’m now an ardent fan. I love the wonderful frogs, fish, snakes and snails at the Ainslie shops and the fantastic dog hanging out of his master’s jalopy at Lyons. There’s a striking orange insect-like thing on the road heading south to Tuggeranong and the giant owl at Belconnen. There’s also the amazing moving sculpture at Canberra Airport that looks like a swarm of Martian flying saucers. However, perhaps best of all, I love the iron eagle in its wonderfully eclectic metallic nest on the top of the hill at the National Arboretum.

But I’m not quite so sure about Chief Minister Katy Gallagher’s latest investment in public art – the famous (or perhaps infamous) Skywhale.

When I first heard about the Skywhale, I thought it would be an amazing thing, an enormous, majestic beast moving gracefully through our blue autumn morning skies accompanied by all manner of other brightly coloured hot-air balloons. Of course, some people wondered what the devil a whale might have to do with Canberra’s Centenary celebrations, but what’s not to love about whales?

When I first encountered the beast in flight, I thought it looked much more like some sort of strange turtle rather than a whale. Friends suggested that it looked like a giant louse, but that may have reflected the fact they were dealing with the horrors of a head lice outbreak at their kids’ primary school.

My children couldn’t stop giggling when they first saw it. My confused little girl said it was a rhinoceros with “things hanging off it”. My son figured it was a whale that had come in contact with an atomic mushroom cloud and had half mutated into a cow with lots and lots of udders.

Another mum I was chatting with the other day absolutely loathed it, saying the combination of a whale with pendulous breasts reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget about the late stages of pregnancy.

But I’ve developed a soft spot for the Skywhale. After all, it is so utterly ridiculous that one can’t help but enjoy it.

My spouse, who has a keen eye for the absurd, thinks it’s a pity it’s a hot air balloon; were it a gas-filled dirigible it could be permanently moored, like a barrage balloon, above the otherwise bland Legislative Assembly building.

So, maybe some of the wowsers complaining about the cost ought to look at the funny side, and appreciate the Skywhale for what it is – a quirky exercise of the imagination that ought to bring a smile to most of us. I still hanker for the magnificent aerial beast of my own imagination, but that would probably never have made quite the same splash!