If they actually existed the sorts of idealised housewives you see in TV ads for laundry detergents (finding deep fulfilment in washing their menfolks' muddy footy jumpers) would love to get their hands on Private George Giles' uniform. It is filthy.
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But Giles' uniform must never fall into these sheilas' cleanliness-crazed clutches. It is one of the Australian War Memorial's great treasures and it is the mud that clings to it, 1918 mud from the battlefield at Morlancourt in France, that makes it so precious.
On Wednesday, staff of the memorial gingerly removed the uniform from its display case (one doubts if even the Shroud of Turin gets handled so reverently) and put it gently on a plinth on a trolley and took it away. Everything in the memorial's Great War galleries is being taken away and stored so that work on the plush, modern, new Great War gallery (to be opened in 2015, the centenary of Gallipoli) can begin.
Not everything to be moved has to be handled quite so gingerly (nearby on Wednesday bronze busts of mustachioed generals awaited their turn, looking as tough as old boots) but of course Giles' uniform is a delicate, textile artefact, made preciously grubby by fragile French dirt.
One had feared that George Giles must have been killed in battle in order for his uniform to become available but the story is much more cheerful than that. Principal curator Nick Fletcher explained on Wednesday (while nearby blue-gloved staff painstakingly lifted the uniform out of its case with many a "Lift" and "Slowly") that historian Charles Bean was there on the day (May 8, 1918) looking for an authentically muddied soldier.
"It was a pre-meditated activity. He [Bean, with the notion of a future war memorial and Great War collection on his mind] knew that this was an important occasion. He therefore went to the quartermaster and said 'May I have a complete set of equipment?' So he got a set of clean equipment and when he saw a tired individual covered in mud, and George Giles was the man in this case, he said 'Hold on there! I'm going to immortalise you. Give me everything you've got and I'll give you a complete replacement set. I'm going to take it away and preserve it for ever.' "
Fletcher thinks that "the only thing Giles got to keep was his rifle".
Wednesday's removal of the uniform from display (once on its trolley it was taken along some corridors and trundled into a lift) is the latest step in preserving it for ever.
Memorial textile conservator Sarah Clayton explained (sometimes endearingly calling the uniform "he" and "Giles") that "Now it'll be carefully packed and taken to the facility at Mitchell and once there all the textile objects will go into a freezer room. There everything gets frozen for 48 hours at minus 20."
That's done because, while over-zealous housewives are no threat to the uniform, insect pests are. The freezing eradicates any creatures that might have infested things that have been on open display.
The uniform will be very thoroughly examined but then, Clayton fancies, "Giles, he's probably just going to be very gently vacuum cleaned, with a tiny micro-brush. And that will probably be about it because he's already been treated about 20 years ago."
When he, Giles, is put back on display in 2015 (and he was one of the star exhibits when the Memorial first opened in 1941) he will find himself, as muddy as ever, in transformed First World War galleries redeveloped at a cost of $32 million.
Identified: 1970s queen of the Plaza
Wednesday's column was decorated by a photograph of a mystery golden girl (inset) being crowned Miss Woden Plaza in the days (the 1970s) before feminism put an end to those sorts of rituals. We asked readers for any information about her and the occasion, and have had some luck.
Someone who was this Miss Woden Plaza's best friend at school identifies her as, then, one Vicki Hawthorne. She went to Canberra High School, worked at the CSIRO and then married. We don't know where she is now but given that her fabulous prize for winning the Miss Woden Plaza title (the year was probably 1974) included a trip to Europe she may well have gone there, found it too enticing to leave, and may still be there.
Meanwhile, here from the same current Woden Plaza Centenary display of Plaza history is a picture, from the days when malls were more fun, of the 1973 Plaza ski slope.
The late, lamented Canberra News and Thredbo Alpine Village combined to present Ski 73, a spectacular held at the Plaza from May 21 to June 2, 1973. There was an enormous dry ski slope on which customers could play, with experienced instructors on hand calling out tips - such as the indispensable ''Bend ze knees''.
While we're gambolling down memory lane, Tuesday's column was about how Canberrans leapt into and onto Lake Burley Griffin just as soon (April 1964) as it had ample water in it.
This prompts reader Peter Rimington to rejoice about the day (perhaps even in 1963) when there was a hovercraft rally on the lake, with some of the vessels made at home in the same spirit as, much later, people made flying machines for the Birdman Rally. Did you or yours take part in the hovercraft event? Do you have memories and (dare we hope?) pictures of it?
