"New rink! New rink! New rink!" we chanted at him as he performed a celebrity puck-dropping just before action got under way.

Yes, fond as Canberra ice-hockey fans are of the dilapidated, old, low-ceilinged venue ( I love the way the hopeless old PA system in a dodgy acoustic makes everything inaudible and makes one wonder if the language being used is Finnish, that of the Brave's star imports) we dream of the day when we have a new, polished, full-sized venue. Why, it might even have seats! At the moment there are just bum-challenging boards. Perhaps the newsworthy proposed new CBD-enriching Civic sports stadium will be equipped to stage on-ice events?

Back to Civic (and to ice hockey) in a moment but first, and while discussing CBDs and their transformations, an exciting announcement was made in Queanbeyan on Monday.

On a windswept Crawford Street and in front of a very Queanbeyan-esque barber's shop, the Business Chamber launched a big idea. The chamber, sure that Queanbeyan's CBD is "dying", has dreams of revivifying and transforming it. And so came to pass Monday's launch of the Downtown Q 2025 international design ideas competition. Your columnist, yet to come back to earth after Sunday's CBR Brave elations, left the car at home and floated to Queanbeyan for the occasion.

If, as Canberrans, you've ever thought how awful and nondescript downtown Queanbeyan is but have kept it to yourself (lest it sound like just more of the Canberra-scoffing-at-Queanbeyan syndrome) you'll be relieved to learn that some Queanbeyaners, too, think their inner-city just won't do.

"We [the Chamber] sat down in March," the chamber's Steve Bartlett said, "and we agreed that downtown Queanbeyan is dying, at the centre."

"Shops are closing, the shops that are trading are losing business. Shops can't pay their rents. It's not [gesturing at our unlovely surroundings] particularly pretty. It's not a place you'd necessarily choose to come to. The car parking is mostly all-day parking, so its filled up with office workers, leaving little room for shoppers. There are [gesturing again, in some despair] no public spaces. So we decided that there is a major problem ... and then we thought we should get ideas from people who probably know better than us. So we decided to run the design competition."

One thing as well as the prizemoney ($64,000 in all) that may make competitors drool is the sheer size of the canvas they will be asked to have dreams for. Monday's diagrams show that a great swathe of inner Queanbeyan is being thought about, that swathe contributed to, Bartlett says, by the council owning "three enormous blocks of land" presently used as prairie-sized car parks. Those CBD prairie's cry out for better uses. And one thing to be addressed, something with resonance for Canberrans with a CBD estranged, pining, from the lake, is a better way of having Queanbeyan's CBD embrace the presently estranged Queanbeyan River.

Bartlett is enthusiastic about how US and European cities "give great examples of what can be achieved with buildings of the right scale". But he's also "inspired by Wagga Wagga, Albury, Griffith and Goulburn, where they've done really good jobs with their downtown areas and made them attractive places to be".

Everything about the competition is at www.downtownqcompetition.com.au

And so back to the scarcely-to-be-imagined visit of an actual government minister, social-descending down into our company (was he trying to woo the bogan vote?), the Phillip rink. It was an opportunity not to be missed by fans. And so we chanted at him, hoping he would notice he was watching an ACT representative team, competing in a national league, forced to play in a mouldering tin shed.

Mischievously, but seriously, we have put it to the minister (and await his reply) that the newsworthy new, covered stadium in Civic to be built by 2020 should anticipate ice hockey's rise by having the capacity to stage on-ice events. Many venues in the world manage this. When your well-travelled columnist was in Chicago we went to a top basketball game (Chicago Bulls) and a top ice-hockey game (Chicago Blackhawks) at the same venue (the United Center) in the same action-packed week.

Megan Jones went on to be an Olympic equestrian (a silver medallist at Beijing in 2008) riding astride a towering steed. But once upon a time (pictured) she was a small girl riding small but indescribably cute ponies.

Ms Jones and her alas unnamed pony are the poster horse and rider for the National Museum of Australia's My Pony Club project. People of all ages are asked to share memories of attending their local pony club.

The stories and pictures will feature in a special museum web page and will also appear in the Museum’s Spirited: Australia’s Horse Story exhibition, which opens on September 11.

Today, 55,000 members belong to Australia's 980 pony clubs and Ms Jones reminisces that “pony club fed my early love of horses – something that has stayed with me for life".

To contribute, gallop to nma.gov.au/myponyclub and tell the museum your story in up to 500 words. Pony club photos can be uploaded.