Where can you see a creature (enormous ears, enormous beak) half Tony Abbott/half pelican skimming over a sheet of water? Where can you see fun-loving Marion Mahony Griffin using a rope swing to leap, chortling, fully clothed, into the lake? Where can you see a black swan hijack a segway and use it to chase a terrified child?

Give up? These spectacles and many more are to be seen in David Pope's activity-packed Lake Burley Griffin. A framed copy of his famous chart of the lake, the "Ornamental Centrepiece and Stormwater Facility for the City of Canberra" was presented on Tuesday to Malcolm Snow, CEO of the National Capital Authority. Lake Burley Griffin is the NCA's responsibility (and joy).

Down at the lake's edge on Tuesday and taking possession of this gift from Pope and from The Canberra Times, Snow said that the artwork would enrich what was at the moment the NCA's very modest boardroom.

Let's hope that it, Pope's chart, doesn't distract the city potentates gathered in the boardroom to make momentous decisions for the city. For the chart is one of those works of art in which you find something new every time you ogle it.

It is only just now, doing homework for this item, that this columnist has discovered in Lake Burley Griffin a creature part duck/part Julia Gillard.

Pope's chart is composed and issued to mark this year's 50th anniversary of the lake's filling. We took the opportunity, with Malcolm Snow there at the lake to ask him, Snow, what he feels about the lake and Canberrans' relationship with it.

For Devil's Advocacy we put to him our long-held whinge that the lake, serene and empty and underused to the point of being tedious, is a great disappointment. It and the city (and the city's people) seem estranged from one another, whereas so many of the world's lakeside and harborside cities seem to have intimate work and play relations with their waters. The almost total banning of anything power-propelled from the lake aids and abets this estrangement, we nagged. Behind us, where we stood, the (to my eyes) dreary Central Basin stretched away to the horizon unimproved by so much as a single kayak.

And then we let Snow (who for years before coming to Canberra was a mover and shaker behind Brisbane's frabjous riverside Southbank precinct) get some words in edgeways.

Yes, he can imagine, with reservations, a more "animated" lake and lake surrounds.

"I do think the lake has to be part of the ongoing evolution of a city, one that responds to some of the challenges both environmental and social that cities that are growing are experiencing. And the demand for recreational resource, when you've got a facility like the lake, will continue to grow.

"I think in the past the attitude has been that the lake has been considered such an important element of the national capital psyche, if you like, in terms of its significance as a constructed element not a natural element. So part of the policy settings that are associated to respect that national significance have been around what's called the 'quiet enjoyment' of the lake. And it's that 'quiet enjoyment' phrase that I think possibly needs be the subject of a more contemporary discussion.

"Look at the growth in demand we're seeing coming from the way people want to use the facility. We've now got perhaps 30 different recreational clubs and societies. Whether it be rowing, dragonboat racing, sailing, kayaking, it's just growing on a daily basis.

"But whether there is scope to activate in terms of reviewing the attitude to, say, power boats, is something that maybe could be considered on an events basis as opposed to something that happens on a daily basis. My fundamental view is that the lake is a piece of public space, and therefore yes, it should be used. It should be animated. When we see events around the lake we can see how well people respond to that. But we're probably limited at this stage in terms of what we can do on the lake - and perhaps it's time for discussion about that.

"I think there is clear scope to actually get people to get close to the water and enjoy that ... and the public interest must prevail. The public interest is that everyone needs to have a right of access to [the lake]. And so I wouldn't want to see jet skis burning 2-stroke oil around this place [gesturing at the lake]. For one thing they're highly polluting and then too there are plenty of places a couple of hours from here [gesturing in the direction of the South Coast] where you can use an entire ocean to do jet skis if you want to. And I think noise is a consideration. The rising levels of urban noise are a concern. I think there is a balance to be struck between what was conceived as a landscape asset ... and it also being a waterbody that was intended [by the Griffins] to be used for recreation. But I think there is a limit."

Nearby a platypus heaved a sigh of relief at this sentiment, and, because the lake and its surrounds are always so eerily quiet, that sigh was clearly audible to us on the shore.

To order your copy of David Pope's Lake Burley Griffin, the ultimate keepsake for Canberrans who love their city and their lake, go to canberratimes.com.au/lake50