The already very famous Powerful Owl of Turner (affectionately known as the Powl, and much-reported and much-depicted in this column) is achieving a sudden new form of fame. It is the inspiration of a new logo for ANU Sport.
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That logo (we'd love to bring you a nice big image of it but ANU Sport is being owlishly unhelpful about this), depicts a stylised owl with open wings and a daunting stare, over the legend "ANU Owls." The new logo has just had its first major outing, emblazoned on the sportswear of the team of 146 scholars that represented the ANU in 17 sports at the Australian University Games on the Gold Coast. In a sense, then, the Turner owl has begun to represent us interstate.
In its announcement of the logo ANU Sport rhapsodised that "ANU Sport have (sic) recently signed with a new merchandising provider, Kukri Sports. Together we have designed the Owl ... It has been modelled off (sic) the Powerful Owl which resides in Haig Park in Turner – less than a kilometre from campus. Photos were provided to Kukri of the iconic bird with a directive to highlight the fierce features of the Owl."
More of this logo and the scholars' employment of it in a moment but first we report that the ANU's adoption of the owl has ruffled some feathers (and we use that metaphor advisedly) at the RUC Canberra North Bowling Club at Turner.
This is because the club has rather got used to the idea of the magnificent fowl being the club's own owl, and in a sense its mascot. Its first suburban manifestation some seasons ago was in trees very close to the club and it has been there, feasting on the meaty fare of this possum-rich corner of the city, ever since. The bowling club has become the informal information centre for those coming to ogle and to photograph the owl. An image of the wonderbird, unmistakably the mighty image of a Powerful Owl and not just of any old owl) is to be etched on a custom-made set of bowls to be the prize in a raffle at the club's open day on 18 October.
The club's Terry Bird has told us he is not amused by the ANU's purloining of the owl for its own purposes. He grumbles that the ANU's announcement of the logo didn't even mention the bowling club's prior association with the superfowl. He says, correctly, that the owl in the logo doesn't look at all like a Powerful Owl. No, it is more like a more commonplace owl species throwing a tantrum.
In his disappointment Terry Bird has leapt into verse. Part of it, describing the owl's all-year-round association with the club's neighbourhood and expressing disappointment with the ANU for stealing the club's owl thunder, goeth like this.
From summer's perch in oaks so green
To winter's blasts in pines he's been.
And now in spring new leaves appear.
It makes us glad that he's still here.
Our owl, well known, makes one wonder
Why should anyone steal our thunder.
David Bennett of ANU Sport swears that "we never intended to steal anyone's thunder" and that it simply hadn't occurred to his organisation that the bowling club would be miffed.
It was just that ANU Sport had been very keen to at long last adopt a logo that, going on sportswear merchandise will identify everyone who ever plays sport for the ANU. Other unis already had, enviably, a sporting logo, and it was high time the ANU had one of its own. The idea of the owl as a logo had been put to students and it had tickled them, their feedback being that they loved the idea in part because owls are famous for their wisdom, making an owl a fine symbol for an institute of learning. Students had loved the idea of the collective noun of "a parliament of owls", this being the city of the federal parliament.
David Bennett is not very apologetic about the owl not looking like an authentic Ninox strenua (the Powerful Owl's distinctive big and terrific species). He says that what they'd been seeking was more a kind of all-purpose owl, an owl-for-all seasons.
Yes (our sentiment not David Bennett's), those of us who admire the Powerful Owl and rejoice that we are blessed by having it in our mountain forests and sometimes in our suburbs will admit that it is a hair-raisingly dramatic-looking, pterodactylish spectre. Some of the fine photographs of it we have published, with it staring down at the photographer with wide-eyed hostility, have even been a little chilling. One can half imagine the scowling monster carrying away one's Cavalier King Charles spaniel, or even one's toddler. By contrast the ANU's owl has some approachable, soft-toy qualities.
The fact that an individual Canberra bird should be the subject of this kind of tug-of-love is really rather appropriate for a city so uniquely bushy and bird-loving. What next, then, for our city's celebrity giant (with its wingspan of perhaps 130cm)?
Well recent columns have been discussing how the awful Canberra Airport arrivals area might be decorated in ways that appropriately announce something about the place people have just arrived at. Why not, replacing the notorious arms ads, a giant version of Geoffrey Dabb's inspired poster (pictured) in which the Powl welcomes folk to its habitat, the Bush Capital?
