ARTIST Tom Buckland won only the Children’s Choice award netting him $500 for his ingenious work of recycling called “Carpflute” at Queanbeyan’s Clearwater Sculpture Prize.

This is the perfect characterisation of what the infamous blight of Corflute signs grew to mean to Canberrans in the all-too-recent ACT elections.

Had the $5000 prize been awarded over the border, CC’s certain Tom would have been a dead-cert winner, despite Sian Watson’s pack of prowling dingo-type creatures taking the prize  

It turned out to be Stephen Harrison’s coat-infused plaster, clothing and canvas print installation, titled “let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings”.

The Canberra we love… only smoother. After and before pictures of the footpath in Yarralumla.

Smooth start to the electoral cycle

Regular readers will recall a recent photo and sniffy reportage of the state of the footpath there, possibly the city’s worst, which seemed at odds with Labor’s policy promise to make the city age friendly with smooth footpaths.

As if by magic, City Services has ironed the wrinkles from the pavement and there it is, a veritable vista of pavement perfection.

John reports getting a letter from City Services acting director-general Ben Ponton saying: “After reconsidering your situation and in light of the fact that the tree is not part of the formal streetscape, [we] will schedule the removal of the tree later this year or early 2017.”
“Your situation,” sniffs John, “Financial or that I have driven them to get rid of hearing from me? Who knows?” But a sensible solution all round.

Sardonic sign spotted in the window of a Gunning shop by our wandering Watson snout.