The ADFA contest with paper planes reminded him of occasions in the 1980s when The Canberra Times was embroiled, self-promotionally, in enormous paper plane competition extravaganzas staged at the AIS indoor stadium at Bruce.

Fossicking back into the past we discover that at these events called The Canberra Times International Newspaper Aeroplane Championships the glittering prize was (gasp!) a new car, provided by a local car dealer. For example in 1985 it was a Holden Camira provided by Beazley and Bruce. It was won by Joe Carnovale of Queanbeyan and the news picture of him sitting in the car comes with a caption explaining that the winner "is looking too stunned to be ecstatic".

For the contest the target car was parked down on the floor of the arena. Up on the terraces the hopeful throngs fashioned paper planes from pages of the Times and tried to fly them in through the sun roof of the (quite distant) car. If you were the only successful pilot during the allotted time of the event then the car was yours. If more than one pilot had success then there was a suspenseful "fly off".

So for example at the May 1986 event Doug Anderson, 16, of Flynn, saw his plane wriggle through the sun roof quite early in the contest and then had to wait on tenterhooks (like the leader in the high jump at the Olympics waiting to see if anyone is going to do better) to see if anyone else was going to succeed. In one picture Doug, in an agony of suspense, has his hands together in an attitude of fervent prayer. And God (as usual moving in strange ways, His wonders to perform) must have heard him, for no one else did penetrate the roof of the car. A Canberra Times picture shows an elated Doug (and his elated mum) at the moment the last contestant missed the target and the gleaming vehicle became Doug's.

The paper planes at the Red Bull "qualiflyers" (looking for three Australians to represent us at the World Championships in Salzburg) were dainty, flimsy things made from a single sheet of A4 paper. By contrast the planes made from newsprint for the AIS events (and the contest was sometimes staged at shopping malls) were often substantial and complex. Some were reinforced with paper clips. There was even an Unusual Design category (as well as the grand prize of the car there were other prizes in other categories) and one Times photograph from 1986 shows Noni Pigram of Sydney launching a craft of lean, long-winged elegance. It is like a model of the sorts of flying machines flown by the Red Baron.

We can tell how phenomenally popular the 1983 and 1984 championships were from Canberra Times photographs showing, at the close of those two tourneys, the arena floor around the car ankle-deep in crashed and abandoned newsprint aircraft. In one 1983 picture a busy team of boy scouts is collecting the aero-debris in plastic sacks.

But enough of this wallow in nostalgia (but what Good Old Days they were when Canberra Times events had new cars as prizes!), as we move on to our own times and to our own National Portrait Gallery.

If only they could speak (and perhaps they do, among themselves, after hours, when everyone has gone home) some of the National Portrait Gallery's treasures could tell miraculous tales of survival.

As reported here, with knobs on and on with pictures, last Tuesday saw the National Portrait Gallery introduce to the nation its wondrous new acquisition, John Webber's 1776 portrait of William Bligh.

Standing close to the picture with the gallery's director Angus Rumble (a picture in his own right thanks to a grand bow tie) we remarked on what great, glossy shape the portrait was in. It is 240 years old, we mused, but has obviously been well looked after and hasn't been languishing in a shed.

"Well this picture has had the kind of hard life you'd expect any 18th century portrait to have had," Rumble reflected.

"But the nice thing about oil paintings is that they're as tough as old boards. In fact I was talking to a colleague yesterday who told me that [the gallery's] portrait by Hugh Ramsay of Madam Melba was rescued from Jessie the fox terrier."

Of course this adds a degree of fascination to this already fascinating painting. Art lovers (and dog lovers too, aware of the damage dogs can do to everything from homework to chair legs to frisbees) will peer even more closely at it to see if Jessie's fangs have made a lasting impression on this masterpiece.