"When a man, or a duck, is tired of Canberra," we enthused to one of the ANU's wood ducks, paraphrasing Dr Johnson's famous remark about London, "he is tired of life; for there is in Canberra all that life can supply."

"That's very true, Ian," the duck agreed.

"The undergraduates lower the tone of this place a bit but otherwise this campus is paradise. We never see a fox, although I'm told they're quite bad in places like Ainslie. And here we hang out around the Shine Dome which has to be one of the few buildings in Australia that has a moat. Ducks love moats."

"Funny you should mention the foxes of Ainslie," I told him "because an Ainslie reader has just sent me a photograph of a brazen one relaxing on her lawn."

But the duck had gone to dabble in the moat.

This concert was not only free (a very important consideration for those battling wage slaves who do not have Bronwyn Bishop's extra, snout-in-trough resources) but also featured a most remarkable instrument. The ANU owns a very faithful replica of a Stein piano of the kind that Mozart knew and played. In 1777 he famously raved about the pianos made by Johann Stein (1728-1792) in a letter to his, Mozart's, dad.

At Tuesday's concert and before unleashing himself and this special piano at Mozart's 12 variations on a tune (it is the tune we all know now as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) pianist Dr Erin Helyard sang the praises of the precious piano. He said it had been "a little neglected of late" but that "it's just been fixed" and now was ready to twinkle.

Helyard told us that in the famous letter we find Mozart raving something akin to "Dad! Dad! I've just come across this really amazing instrument [pianos made by Stein]!"

"You can tell he really, really wants one," Helyard explains, and that the youngster really, really wants his dad to buy him one.

Yes, in the famous letter Mozart admits that at 300 gulden (you can imagine his father wincing at the cost) the instruments seem fiendishly expensive, but, boy, the value for money since "the trouble and the labour which Stein puts into the making of it is something mere money can't buy".

Mozart had played a Stein and was besotted. He described to his dad Stein's eccentric but effective ways of piano-building.

"He guarantees that the sounding-board will neither break nor split. When he has finished making one for a clavier, he places it in the open air, exposing it to rain, snow, the heat of the sun and all the devils in order that it may crack. Then he inserts wedges and glues them in to make the instrument very strong and firm. He is delighted when it cracks, for he can then be sure that nothing more can happen to it."

In this columnist's aeons of concert-going I don't think I can remember a musician ever having so transparent a crush on the instrument they're playing for us as Elyard's Tuesday crush on the replica Stein. Before playing it he spoke of it with reverence and enthusiasm ("the sound has a lovely, woodwind-like quality to it and played on this piano this piece [the variations] really comes off"). But then when he'd finished and as we all applauded him, he gestured towards the instrument and gave it its own well-deserved round of applause.

Richly deserved too. The 12 variations on Ah vous dirai-je, Maman (to bogan ears Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) were full of tuneful thunder and lightning but somehow it was mellow, woodwindy thunder and lightning.

Tuesday's concert of fortepiano and violin music (Skye McIntosh played the violin) was co-presented by the ANU School of Music. It was staged in the Great Hall of University House and was the second in the Mozart In Three Cities series.

On my way (floating) back to the car my duck friend waylaid me and asked me for more details about the Ainslie fox.

Stephanie Haygarth of Ainslie contacted us after seeing Tuesday's column's fabulous photograph of a flamboyant male Flame Robin.

"Sadly, we don't have robins in our Ainslie garden, probably because the noisy miners beat up all the little birds and chase them away, but we do have lots of other native wildlife, a benefit of living near Mt Ainslie.

"But on Sunday morning at 10 I looked out my bedroom window to see this despoiler of native birds and animals, a fox, relaxing in the sun on our lawn. It looked surprisingly at ease, rolling, stretching and washing itself, while I took photos of it from the window, but the moment I went outside to get some better pics, it took off at speed.

"We hear them in the garden and vicinity often at night, of course, but this is the first time I've seen one here during the day. Unfortunately, as we now have a growing suburban rabbit population – we see rabbits often in the garden during the day and now have to fence tender new plants – foxes are bound to spend more time here. Doesn't bode well for the native suburban wildlife, which will doubtless suffer further devastation."