Loyal readers will remember, perhaps blushing a little, Kym Bradley's brilliant sequence of photographs, published in this column, of two of the ACT's wedge-tailed Eagles mating. She has kept an eye on those eagles and now has passed on to us (with a photograph a little too indistinct to use here) the glad tidings that the meaningful interface she saw and photographed has resulted in at least one downy nestling. When and if she gets a distinct photograph of it and gives us permission to use it, we will.
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Baby eagles are wondrous things. I've been privileged to see the occasional one at close quarters. They somehow combine, at the same time, some of the qualities of a cuddly, white, fluffy soft toy and some of the qualities of the lean and powerful killer pterodactyl they will become. Cute as the babes are, their feet are already talons.
Bradley reports that the two eagles she captured in their moment of intimacy (the female never once letting go of the rabbit offal she was holding) are now frequently shoulder to shoulder on a branch beside the nest in which their youngster (and there may be two of them) nestles.
Rather than reproduce, yet again, that blush-making piece of raptor porn, here is another bird picture more appropriate to a family column. It is yet another of the paintings of gang-gang cockatoos decorating the foyer of North Ainslie Primary School.
This is the year of the Canberra Ornithologist Group's year-long gang-gang survey as we try to learn more about our charismatic but mysterious, poorly-understood faunal emblem. North Ainslie Primary School, situated in a gang-gang hotspot (and with the species as the school's logo) is an enthusiastic supporter of COG's Imagining Gang-gangs art competition. Its closing date looms, but there is still time for you to get painting, drawing, moulding and shooting (photos and videos).
The competition is open to students aged 5-18 years (including pre-schoolers) and entries close on November 7. Artworks will be exhibited at the M16 Artspace, Griffith from November 26-30.
There is a noisy flock of competition details at
But back to our grief. Yesterday's column's hymn of praise to and reminiscence about Gough Whitlam rang bells in the belfries of many readers. Thank you for your anecdotes. He made memorable impressions on everyone who met and dealt with him.
But how the needle on my hypocrisyometer went wild with agitation during Tuesday's condolence motion speeches in the House of Representatives. So many people said smarmy things about a man you know they have always despised and who stood for noble notions alien to their cramped and rancid imaginations.
But one theme of people talking sincerely about him in recent days has been the way in which he didn't let his 1975 dismissal embitter and consume him. For those of us who have no gift for forgiveness of even trivial personal slights that always seemed almost superhuman of him. It was
It was his October 1999 launch at the ANU of the Oxford Australian Dictionary, and in a small and intimate space that had all of us there gathered reverently around his chair so as to be able to catch his every (conversationally uttered, unamplified) word.
Whitlam was caught up in working for the Yes side in the republic referendum (the vote was due on November 6), and that was what he talked to us about.
He alleged, softly and mischievously, that the real reason why prime minister John Howard was fighting against the republican option was that he, Howard, hated the then governor-General Sir William Deane. He said Howard was afraid of the people and the parliament choosing Sir William as our first president. What's more, he, Howard, wanted to make his own unilateral choice of a governor-general.
But don't we all hate to think, Whitlam invited (trying to send a shiver up the national spine) who Howard would choose to succeed Sir William? We should worry about that Whitlam thought because Australian prime ministers have chosen as governors-general some shockers, they, the prime ministers who chose them, should be ashamed of.
"Now, I've apologised to the nation for the choice I made of governor-general [he chose Sir John Kerr, who went on to sack him] and I really hope Bob Hawke has apologised for the choice [Mr Hawke, horrifying millions of us, chose Labor nouveau royalist Bill Hayden] he made. Even Malcolm Fraser chose better governors-general than we [Labor] did."
So here was Gough joking (and with grace and aplomb) about something he might reasonably have felt was too grim a tragedy to laugh about.
Chief Minister Katy Gallagher has said already that we might honour Whitlam by naming a Canberra suburb after him but surely we can do better than that? There are scarcely two things on Earth less like a suburb and a person and this is why no Canberra suburb named after a person embodies that person's character and does that person justice. Whitlam was the least suburban of men. There has to be a bigger, better idea.
