LAST year, residents of Yarralumla got into the swing of Christmas in a big way. Not the tawdry, Chinese, flashing lights for them. Outside houses, hundreds of dignified red bows were wrapped around street trees down most every street… except one. 

This year, that’s been fixed. And how.

Yarralumla’s number one resident, Governor-General David Hurley, has trumped the suburb’s response and had the entire 1.3-kilometre length of Dunrossil Drive, the entrance to Government House, festooned with the Yarralumla Residents’ Association-approved giant red bows on all the mature trees lining the driveway. There are even bows on the pillars either side of the entrance gates.

Not that anyone would be game to steal the vice-regal bows, but there must be a black market of envy building, with one householder complaining that one of her two bows has been stolen. It’s harder to do that with lights on the roof!