Flags wilt on Queen's visit 60 years ago

And as reported in Monday's column (but first reported by this paper in 1954) a terrible deluge and some miscommunication left a host of children - who had waited to make a special display to Her Majesty as she arrived at Parliament House - soaked and teary. They had all been issued with paper flags that formed parts of enormous letters and had been trained to form themselves into a gigantic ''OUR QUEEN''. But the command came too late and the Queen had already bustled indoors out of the rain.

''I was one of the drenched flag schoolchildren on the hill [it was across the road from Parliament and was later removed and used as fill for the Kings Avenue Bridge],'' Christine Maher says.

''However, someone took mercy on us and we were allowed to sit on the gutter pavement on the other side of the road opposite the Parliament House steps in front of the barriers which were holding back an adoring public.

''The Queen reviewed the march past and we saw everything.

''I particularly remember the Royal Australian Navy sailors. The canvas of their caps had been whitened with sandshoe paste. The downpour caused this to run and they had white rivulets running down their faces. It got in their eyes and some had trouble seeing and started stumbling when they did their eyes right for the royal salute. True!

''There were huge numbers of servicemen in town for the royal march past. They were bivouacked in tents all around the War Memorial; another lot were camped at the firing range at Majura Lane.

''We drove around and looked at them. It was all mud and misery. I was 10.''

Patricia Frei remembers that ''I was one of those 'drenched urchins' on the hill outside old Parliament House. I was 6½ years old at the time.

''I can definitely remember that I was in the 'O' of 'OUR QUEEN' - the 'O' being on the side nearest the present National Library - and I well remember the trees were on my right.

''I remember we were pushed and shoved around by our teachers so the 'O' would look something like an 'O'.

''We were all so excited that we kept moving out of the 'O'. That stayed more in my mind than the actual royal visit!''

Although a passionate republican, your columnist concedes that Her Majesty the Queen, discussed with reverence elsewhere in this column, is in many ways a fabulous role model for Australian womanhood.

One of the great examples she sets, an example that leaps to mind as we look at some of the works destined for the forthcoming Grey Matters exhibition at the Belconnen Arts Centre, is that she has never for a moment tried to disguise the greying of her hair. She has, bless her, aged credibly.

Canberra artist Karen Green's Grey Matters series of self-portraits is a kind of celebration of how ''liberating'' she believes it is for greying women to be openly, flamboyantly grey. Her series of portraits begins with one of her showing ''little acceptance'' of allowing herself to be frankly grey. Then the series finishes with this wild and exuberant one in which now that she's embraced ''total acceptance'' she imagines her fantastically exaggerated grey locks as ''sweeping wings'' on which she now soars to enjoy her freedom to look like herself.

''I'm attempting to start a conversation, to ask questions about why we feel we have to do these things to cover up our experience. Do we always have to appear fertile and nubile to be relevant? Bugger that, I say.''

Yes, we feel sure that Her Majesty, upon noticing her first grey hairs, said exactly the same thing.

Alas, her dear husband went too bald too quickly to be able to be a liberating ''Bugger that'' royal role model for ageing men. This is a shame because it's been too much for the defiantly grey Sean Connery to do all on his own and because more and more men, including many in the media and federal Parliament, have turned, nervously, to the deceitful dye bottle.

Now they have gnarled, mature-age faces that clash, daily more absurdly, with heads of hair tinted to look like the locks of chaps in their 20s.