Whatever is this parochial column, seldom venturing any further north of Canberra than the pumpkin-mad hamlet of Collector, doing in these sub-Arctic and Arctic realms of the northern hemisphere?

The answer is that we think that Canberra Airport, might, in the light of the seething No Airport Arms Ads debate, adapt an idea that thoughtful Yellowknife and imaginative Longyearbyen display in their airport terminals.

Back to those far northern premises in just a moment after we have reminded you of our No Airport Arms Ads imbroglio, the subject of news stories and of impassioned Letters to the Editor.

The arrivals and baggage pickup area of the Canberra Airport is a bare and sterile space (whenever we are there we feel like a laboratory rat in a laboratory) with almost no decoration whatsoever save for huge advertisement panels dominated by ads for arms manufacturers.

Some Canberrans and visitors to Canberra have become agitated or at the very least disappointed by this. A No Airport Arms Ads campaign (NAAA) has arisen, convened by Dr Sue Wareham. One of its manifestations is an online petition, aimed at the airport's owners, at which there is NAAA's manifesto of its objections to the ads.

"If you ever come through Canberra Airport, one of the main gateways to our national capital, you are likely to receive a 'welcome' from some of the world's biggest arms manufacturers. Raytheon, BAE, Lockheed Martin, and Thyssen Krupps have all had big display ads there.

"Austal is also there, proudly stating that its vessels are 'delivering Australia's border patrol capability'."

"The ads are inappropriate. They give the feel that one is entering a military-industrial complex that is preparing for war. They ... present a sanitised image of what weapons do. They are inappropriate for refugees and others from war-torn countries, and inconsistent with Canberra's new status as a Refugee Welcome Zone."

When we spoke to Dr Wareham on Wednesday she was especially scathing about the Austal ads, fancying that since we are a designated refugee welcoming place "we should be welcoming these people, not advertising the boats that turn them away".

She's scathing too about the way the ads "do not reflect the Canberra community or its community or its many beautiful natural and cultural attractions".

We told her that we have been having some fun looking for airports of the world that do take pains to reflect their local, beautiful natural and cultural attractions (and this where Yellowknife and Longyearbyen come back into our narrative). But we wondered, first, what sorts of things she herself imagined for the airport as an improvement on all those death-dealing submarines and fighter jets.

She says that one thing she'd like is, projected on to an ample screen, a film of local Aboriginals performing a Welcome To Country ceremony. She'd also like scenic depictions of unique-to-Canberra-and-the-ACT places and buildings. She'd give guernseys to, say, scenes of Namadgi National Park and images of our Parliament House.

We liked those ideas and told her so. But then she had to hurry away, before we could mention to her some more ideas suggested by Yellowknife and Longyearbyen, to Greens' leader Richard Di Natale's address to the National Press Club.

Yellowknife Airport (the busiest airport in northern Canada) and Longyearbyen have decorated their arrivals areas with life-sized effigies of the iconic animal of their regions, the polar bear. At Longyearbyen the striking brute is posed slap bang in the middle of the baggage pickup carousel.

Why not, at Canberra Airport, airport of a Bush Capital famous for its lucky citizens' cheek-by-jowl relationships with wonderful wild creatures, some Yellowknife-esque faunal and/or floral celebration of our unique bushiness? It's probably true that we don't have a single species quite so pivotally central to us as the polar bears are to our two examples, but we do have, as wild Canberrans, some of the most beautiful of God's creatures to choose from. The Snow family, owners of the airport, so imaginative in commissioning and installing fine works of art elsewhere in and around the airport (including the fabulous giant kangaroos beside a main runway) should surely leap at such an opportunity.

While not sure that the arms ads impart "the feel that one is entering a military-industrial complex that is preparing for war" we did agree with Dr Wareham that the ads do make that important part of the airport feel very weird. As almost the only decorations, the only embellishments in the spacious space, in that setting they impart the only character (and very weird character it is), the setting has. Dr Wareham says that, yes, well-travelled people tell her that they have never come across anything quite like it, anywhere.

Dr Wareham testifies that NAAA campaign folk have met with airport management. She's sure that Canberra Airport is proud of its image in the community and will be sensitive to suggestions (for example indicated by a teeming host of signatures on the petition), that the brandishing of these weird ads may be tarnishing that image.

"Open arms, not lethal arms, for Canberra Airport," NAAA's manifesto chants.

"It's time for the arms ads to go!"

Well-travelled readers! Do you know of airports with arrival areas that made you go "Gosh!" with delight and that might be role models for our airport? Do let us know.