A most important Canberra-Queanbeyan man has just had his ears and his nostrils hosed out (they were full of cobwebs) to make him presentable for his birthday party.
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Yes, the spruced up (and balloon decorated) bronze statue of John Gale (April 17, 1831 to July 15, 1929) was the focus of Monday's annual celebration of the great gentleman's birthday.
This year's party, as the ubiquitous mayor of Queanbeyan Tim Overall pointed out, took on extra significance because 2013 is Queanbeyan's 175th year and, of course, Canberra's 100th.
For someone as important as ''The Father of Canberra'' (that's what it says, with some justification, on the statue) the Queanbeyan statue is in a modest and not very dignified spot. Peter Corlett's statue itself (unveiled in March 2001) verges on magnificence. Corlett has made an elderly but upright and bushy-bearded Gale, showing lots of avuncular body language. But it has been shyly placed just back from the pavement at the Court House at a busy intersection where almost everyone who drives through Queanbeyan can never notice it. It is hemmed in and overshadowed a bit by traffic lights and other streetscape paraphernalia. Monday's speeches to a small audience had to compete against rattling and howling traffic noise, and the shrill beep-beep-beeps telling people it was their turn to cross the roads.
If bourgeois, rolling-in-taxpayers' money Canberra had someone so pivotal to its history it wanted to honour with a statue one senses his or her statue would be very reverently situated. It would be somewhere where there are wide lawns and a deep hush broken only by the laughter of picnicking Canberrans and the pops of their champagne bottles.
Monday's occasion was utterly managed (one was reminded of a tireless border collie's management of a flock of sheep) by Queanbeyan artist and historian and all-round dynamic Queanbeyaner Connee Colleen.
She was one of those who came up with and fought for the idea of a statue of Gale and her interest in the statue since it was ensconced has been literally hands-on. Again, we do things very differently in Canberra so that it's impossible to imagine a Canberran being so committed to a Canberra statue of someone that they take it upon themselves to keep that statue clean. But it emerged on Monday that Colleen has always been involved, personally, in keeping the Gale statue immaculate. Standing where it does it attracts, as well as all most of the usual things that make a statue mucky (although angry traffic noise does keep the Gale statue mostly seagull-free), the fuel-grime of traffic.
Colleen, in anticipation of Monday, had put a lot of work into making him the shining apparition he was on Monday.
''I did six hours with him on one day and then I came back and did another six on another day. Because of the drought [and water restrictions forbidding the use of hoses] for nearly 10 years I couldn't do him with the hose so I used to bucket him. But this time I brought the hose to him. You've got to use hose on his nostrils and ears to get the spiders out. Then I scrubbed him all down with conservation soap. I mean we're really rapt in him. Everyone loves him. He's our beautiful John.''
Is there anyone in Canberra paying this kind of loving attention to various Canberra statues? Is anyone lovingly bucketing Corlett's Chifley and Curtin in the parliamentary triangle? Who is turfing the spiders out of the ears and nostrils of Laurie Daley at Canberra Stadium?
''John here's looking mighty fine,'' Overall said above the cacophony of traffic and as a bracing breeze sent the cheerful Happy Birthday balloons Gale was holding bobbing and tossing.
''He looks as if he might have had a bit of a scrub-up for the occasion.''
Overall said it was appropriate that we had a cold and blustery day for the occasion because Yass/Canberra sites, including the site at Canberra, had come into contention because only places with cool to cold climates were in the running. Bracing climates were thought essential to good health and to the making of good brains.
He introduced the living guest of honour, Jim Woods, who at 99 (he will be 100 on November 11) has outlived even Gale (who died at 98). Both men were deeply involved in the newspaper industry. Gale was proprietor of the Golden Age and the Queanbeyan Age and was still reporting and writing in his 80s.
Woods has had 93 years in the newspaper industry. He started delivering newspapers in Temora when he was six, went on to be proprietor of many bush newspapers including for decades the plucky Queanbeyan Age, and today is active with his brainchild, Queanbeyan's Printing Museum.
''I came here in 1956,'' Woods reminisced on Monday.
''John Gale had long passed on but everybody talked about him to me and he sort of set an example to me. I thought, 'Who is this old bloke? I'll have to do pretty good to keep up with him.' At the time the paper [the Age ] was not going too good. But as a citizen of Queanbeyan I'm very proud to have had a say in the progress of the town. When I came here it was just a little town of 8000 and Canberra took over and ran everything good that was here. But I was privileged to be able to do something about that.''
Then Woods did the ceremonial cutting of a very grand, white, birthday cake that had the words ''John Gale - Father Of Canberra'' proudly emblazoned on it in chocolate writing. With Gale looking on and smiling appreciatively, wan sunlight at last coming through the clouds and gleaming on his recently-scrubbed cheeks, three hearty cheers were given him.
