Canberra Confidential / How time slips away…

Revealed… a colourful banner painted by mid-Elizabethan children in Belconnen.

Buried to commemorate the Centenary of Federation in 2001, it was intended to be unearthed in 2011. So four years late a team from TAMS did the honours and uncovered a concrete manhole that contained two PVC pipe cylinders.

The first was water damaged and the soggy remnants of disintegrating photos, papers and video tapes were all that remained. The second cylinder was intact. It contained T-shirts, photos, video tape and a large colourful banner, which appeared to have been painted by school children of those days.  

Contents of the time capsule will be displayed in the Belconnen Community Centre, as part of BCS’s 40th birthday celebrations, on Tuesday, November 10.  

Knock, knock. Who’s there?

WHOEVER’S living at 83 Dominion Circuit, in leafy Deakin, is giving the locals the heebie-jeebies.

CC’s inner-south snout says there are guards in camouflage vests patrolling the footpath outside the gates, just around the corner from a primary school.

“It gives me the heebies that we’re inspected as we drive in our own street,” she sniffs.

“Is it unsafe for the children to play in the street? Do we need to wear bullet-proof gear to walk past that house?

“Is it legal for me to stop and take their photo? Not that I think I’d be game, even for ‘Canberra Confidential’.” Wimp!

Barr’s last laugh

LATE to give a lecture to journalism students at UC last week, Buzzfeed Australia’s press gallery reporter and former ABC Darwin journo Mark Di Stefano took to Twitter to berate Chief Minister Andrew Barr about the difficulty of getting a taxi.

“Taxis in your town are an absolute joke,” Di Stefano fumed. “What’s going on?”

With a withering one-line response, Barr reminded the reporter, who must have missed the national and international attention, that “Uber starts up later next week”.

Fourth win from a row

THE Burley Griffin Canoe Club’s flatwater marathon racing contingent left all in its wake with its fourth successive club points win in the NSW marathon series.

The win was secured at Burrill Lake, on the NSW south coast, in the last of the season’s 10-race series.

BGCC first won the series in 2012 in a come-from-behind, final-race win.

So confident was the organising committee that the trophy would be won by the then-leading Sydney club that it was already engraved before BGCC’s last-race upset.

More information on BGCC paddling activities at bgcc.org.au

Tones sports a shiner

FOR the past few years Real Big Tony has been making some sort of statement around town and last week citynews.com.au editor John Griffiths spotted him dancing on a coffee table in Northbourne Avenue.

Since his real-life persona’s fall from the prime ministerial pedestal, CC can only imagine RBT won’t be getting out as much, something he seems to have acknowledged by the big black eye he was sporting.

Long life to death feast

THE ancient Mexican feast day, “The Day of the Dead”, will soon be upon us and Canberra’s Mexican Embassy is determined to do it in style with a celebration on November 2 involving Mexican artist Joaquin Garcia-Quintana and actress Karina Salgado.

Embassy staff have sent out a comforting notice headed: “Long life to Mexican Death” that includes a little rhyme:

We have no problem admitting

That you’ll have to hold your breath

Because the merry Mexican death

Is always alive and kicking.

Confessions of a butterfly

“CITYNEWS” social doyenne Lyn Mills, pictured, is stepping into the limelight at the National Film and Sound Archive this week with a presentation to the Archives’ Friends group titled: “A Social Butterfly in Bogong Territory”.

The veteran social writer and photographer apparently used to host a long-gone Canberra television show “David Jones Notebook” and, through archival footage and reminiscences, she’s promising an “affectionate and often hilarious look at Canberra’s social history”.

It’s at the NFSA theatrette, 5.30-7pm, on Friday, October 30. Friends of the NFSA free, others gold coin donation.

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