But now his first batch of mugs (not a huge batch for his Canberra works are really mostly a cottage industry run from his cottage in Newcastle) is soon to go, shyly, on sale in Canberra.

"I've wanted to do a Canberra mug for a while," he tells us, "and couldn't think of what to do and then suddenly there it was. So obvious. Too obvious."

He tells us that of all his Canberra designs (much trumpeted here because we admire him enormously for bringing out the sheer character of Canberra things we'd taken for granted) it is the bus shelter image, whether as a print, a tea-towel, a magnet or a card, that has been the great success. He likens these bus shelters' iconic, place-defining importance in Canberra to the importance of the bright red phone booths to London. And he thinks its no wonder that Canberrans are fond of the bus shelters since they've been a feature of Canberra since 1975. So many of us have loitered in and around them during our Canberra peregrinations.

But it took Dickinson, we're sure, to make us look twice at the shelters and see how special they are. Surely it is unthinkable now, we nattered together, that the government (presently replacing some of the old ones with characterless little shelters of glass and steel) will ever abolish and throw away all of them? The protests would be terrific. Governments might be toppled.

One possibility that might occur to an ACT government with a sense of humour (which of course would rule out any ACT Liberal government, the Liberals being even unable to laugh at portrayals of Hitler as a striptease dancer) is to convert the occasional redundant old bus shelter into a uniquely Canberran public lavatory. Dickinson knows of two Canberra bush shelters that were converted to public lavatories on the fun-loving Gold Coast. He says that after all, lots of the shelters will already have at times been informally used as lavatories (by those Canberrans caught short) and so "it would just be a natural progression, really".

The unifying iconic importance of the shelters to Canberra is underlined by the way in which Dickinson has tried, but in vain, to find anything in Sydney that has a comparable resonance for people of that metropolis. Sydney, so enormous and so diverse, simply has no equivalents of Canberra's bus shelters or of inner-London's telephone booths. Sydney has one fabulous Opera House and one terrific Harbour Bridge, but has nothing like Canberra's sprinkled-everywhere bus shelters, familiar to all Sydneysiders wherever they live.

He's rather "given-up" on unwieldy Sydney but is quietly at work in his cottage (with investigative visits to Canberra) on several Canberra-based projects.

For example, he's going to do something in praise of Canberra's (now venerable) articulated buses. It may be that, as once upon a time with the bus shelters, most of us have never looked twice at these functional juggernauts to think of them as anything special. But Dickinson is bound to make us think again. He fancies that when in an artwork he "isolates" a bus to make it the focus of our attention and once he's given a factory-made mass produced bus "a hand-drawn quality" we will begin to see it has some endearing warts-and-all individualistic qualities.

We suggested to him (but he says "I'm rubbish at drawing people!") it will be fun if his forthcoming Canberra bus has the unmistakable face of Canberra's very own Nick Kyrgios as a bling-wearing passenger inside the bus, his famous face pressed up against one of its windows.

This Australian Open, with so many of the Goliaths of the game (including Kyrgios) allowed to spoil the entertainment with so many aces, reminds us of the need for some changes to tilt the game back in favour of the game's artists. It is rallies we all want to see and every ace strangles a rally at birth. Boring brutes and monsters like Canada's eerie Milos Raonic (his natural hair, like Tony Abbott's unnatural hair, somehow never becoming dishevelled) must not be allowed to prevail.

Anti-Goliath reforms might include allowing a server only one serve, and/or bringing the service court line closer to the net so that not even the tallest Goliath can smite a successful serve that goes in a straight line from A to B like a bullet. Then, a speed limit on the serve (with anything faster than 170 km/h being vulgar and illegal) would be a boon, as would a new, softer, cuddlier, rally-promoting tennis ball that when served can longer violently ricochet off a court like a musket-ball off armour.

Best of all, shots that require artistry (like, on Wednesday night, Our Nick's perfect drop shots and Andy Murray's two splendid topspin lobs, one forehand, one backhand) would attract two points, not one. Thus for example, a backhand topspin lob caressed by someone already 30-love up would give him or her the game, on top of the warm inner glow of knowing that he or she is one of the Rembrandts, one of the Mozarts of Tennis.

Details of when and where to buy Trevor Dickinson's mug are at trevordickinson.com.