Thursday's Turner 60th Birthday Tea Party at the school in Condamine Street was a festive occasion. In the school hall festooned with green balloons pupils and teachers of all eras and of our own times milled around recognising and embracing one another. Carried away in their enthusiasm, some women of my vintage claimed to have been at the school with me (but alas I was educated in the land of the Piltdown Man hoax).

Schoolchildren in black and white wait staff uniforms (though topped with top hats of glittering green) moved among us serving a vast variety of cakes. On and in front of the stage and next to a substantial pink and green birthday cake (on a morning so dominated by cake that one wondered if the school itself might be made of gingerbread) there were various appropriate entertainments and interviews.

For one of the entertainments the junior school choir piped Perry Como's great 1957 hit Catch a Falling Star. It was chosen, an MC explained, because it was ''top of the charts in the 1950s'' when the school was opened.

To go with the lines ''Catch a falling star/And put it in your pocket/Save it for a rainy day'' the sweet choristers reached up, grabbed an imaginary star and put it in their pockets so that they had, ready for that rainy day, ''a pocket full of starlight''.

One of the interviews sprung a surprise upon Stephen Gilfedder, a kindergarten pupil from 1954.

''In 2004 renovations of classrooms were undertaken,'' principal Jo Padgham told us, ''and in the pulling back of cupboards these two books [waving 1950s school exercise books] appeared behind the cupboard and we pulled them out and the name written on them was 'Stephen Gilfedder'. So come on down, Stephen. Do you remember hiding these books? Weren't you proud of your work? Your handwriting then was divine.''

Later, examining the books we found that while his handwriting had been divine his spelling hadn't been so hot (attracting corrections in the now disallowed red) so that for example in 1956 he'd told how ''On a hot sumer day we went to play on the sandy bech.''

Let's hope his spelling is better now because, blessed with Turner School's special part in his education, he has risen dizzyingly to become a head of media and communications in the Education and Training Directorate. Gilfedder had a lovely, memory-stirring morning and told us: ''I've just been reminded, meeting up with former schoolmates, how multicultural we were.

''It was because we'd had so much immigration from postwar Europe. I was mates with a boy whose mother was German and his father Polish and they'd met in a resettlement camp of some sort. We even had a teacher who was German and so we learnt to sing Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann [The Happy Wanderer] so it was a remarkable school community. We lived in O'Connor which was the extent of Canberra, an outer suburb.''

One ex-pupil (accompanied by her serene seeing-eye dog Gillies) with especially happy memories of the school was Amanda Heal. She attended the school from 1975 to 1980 and from 1975 she and some others were the first Canberra blind children to attend a mainstream school.

''Till then all blind children from Canberra were sent to Sydney, to special [boarding] schools. So I was very fortunate. I was able to stay here with my family and go to school here.

''I loved primary school,'' the lawyer recalled, with passion. ''I absolutely loved it. All my memories of Turner are fond. It was a very happy, nurturing place.''

As we left, the orgy of cake was continuing with waiters in glittering green hats delivering to everyone slices of the just-cut green and pink 60th birthday cake.

Canberra and region are especially spider-rich and exciting new research published this week confirms what most of us already knew, that, yes, spiders have ''personalities''. Almost all Canberrans have at some time shared a home with a Huntsman spider showing as much character as any of the human inhabitants of the house.

Now a newsworthy paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society describes how social spiders in India assign chores within their colonies according to spiders' personalities.

So for example, bold spiders seem to be given the tasks that require boldness, and shy and home-loving spiders find fulfilment doing domestic chores.

This reminds that last December this column gushed in praise of the arachnofabulous 2013 Peacock Spiders - Jewels of the Australian Bush calendar produced by two Canberra spider enthusiasts, Stuart Harris and Jurgen Otto.

Those of you who have the calendar will be currently enjoying the spectacular Maratus mungaich, Mr August.