Canberra's suburban associations can be fountains of NIMBY misery. And so we pricked up our ears at once (like a German Shepherd puppy hearing the magic word "walk") when the Downer Community Association contacted us to rejoice about something.
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The Association's Miles Boak alerts us to "Exciting good news from the suburbs – news making people happy."
"The heritage-listed Downer shops are currently being restored [they'll be finished by December this year] to former glory similar to when they were built as a CSIRO research work shop in 1943."
As Miles Boak suggests there is something rather special about what's happening at Downer. Today most Canberra shopping centres arise from nothing or perhaps after a place has been cleared by some ruthless bulldozing. But in the unique Downer case the shops were first fashioned from NCDC-spared existing buildings first erected by the CSIRO in 1943. Among other uses they stabled tractors. The tractors were there because during the war and before suburbia crept out to what were then wide open spaces (although eventually the farm and the new suburb of Downer were to co-exist for a while), swathes of northern Canberra were used by the CSIRO as an experimental farm.
Our picture is of a quite new mural at the shops. It is by the accomplished Byrd (Dan Maginnity). It is based on a famous wartime photograph of two damsels of the Australian Land Army going cheerfully off to work (one can almost hear them singing "Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go!") in one of the farm's opium poppy fields.
Workers now at work on restoring the shops are blessed with an unusual superabundance of fine, red, 1940s bricks from the old brickworks. Why is this so? There are so many bricks there that you'd almost imagine that the Downer bricks are breeding amongst themselves.
But no, that's not it Miles Boak explains.
It's that when the CSIRO premises were built in 1943 they were made especially sturdy, with double-brick thicknesses everywhere. This was to enable them to be better able to withstand blasts from any bombings of the farm by the fiendish Nipponese enemy keen to strangle our government's secret war works going on there.
"For the last 10 years the shops' building has been derelict and abandoned, with graffiti and falling apart so everyone is happy a new owner has brought and is restoring it," Miles Boak enthuses.
"There will be alfresco eateries to take account of the great location next to the oval and to a public square."
The new suburb of Downer was gazetted in 1960 and as if that wasn't enough Canberra excitement for one year 1960 was momentous for something else as well.
Tuesday's column's reverent mention of the refreshingly offensive US satirical songwriter/musician Tom Lehrer has reminded some mature-age Canberrans of going to see him.
On his very controversial 1960 Australian tour (there had been attempts to ban his records and to stop him performing some of his most knicker-knotting songs while here) he gave just one Canberra concert. It was on March 24 and reader Jean Higgie was there.
"My husband and I went to the Capitol Theatre in Manuka to see him. The performance was for one night only and the theatre was sold out. It is the only time to my knowledge that a live performance was held in the normally films-only delightful cinema theatre.
"It was a truly wonderful and enjoyable experience. On stage just the extraordinarily talented Tom Lehrer and piano – no supporting cast, just straight into it! A truly memorable night."
If your drab and wretched life has so far left you unfamiliar with Tom Lehrer and his art then you can find him performing on YouTube, although animal lovers should be careful to avoid his Poisoning Pigeons In The Park.
On the night The Canberra Times' critic was as beguiled as young Mr and Mrs Heggie.
"Tom Lehrer takes the stage with the mild air of a junior lecturer [in 1960 he was 32 and is still with us today at 87] meeting his first class; and leaves it with a gangling mixture of surprise and pleasure that he has done so well. His appeal is to the perpetual undergraduate in all of us – the idealist looking out with a clear and perceptive mind ... on a world which does look very sick indeed."
Lehrer's closing number at the Capitol was, appropriately, his explicit vision of the coming nuclear war (in 1960 the Cold War was chillingly intense) We will all go together when we go. It is typical of Lehrer's quirkiness that the grotesque, doom-laden words are sung to a cheery melody. That's because as the song reasons all grieving will be abolished (no more upsetting funerals) because with all mankind wiped out there'll be no one left behind to grieve.
Lyrics alone don't wield the matter because Lehrer's piano-playing was as witty as his words, but here is just a little of the song.
Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
And we will all bake together when we bake.
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.
