This columnist cannot usually get excited about celebrity couples (I wouldn't cross the road to see the inexplicably, undeservedly popular Kate and Wills). But Rosie and Rex, the sinuous celebrity goannas of Mount Ainslie are an exception.
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Here today, after our items about their newsworthy behaviour and photographs of each of them alone, is our first photograph of them together. They are entwined (but not mating, thank goodness, for this is a family column) in an open show of affection. Rosie, the female, is atop her partner, the far larger Rex (as in T-Rex).
Just to recap, researchers Matthew Higgins and Dr Don Fletcher are studying the Rosenberg's monitors (a vulnerable and beautiful and not-well-understood goanna species) of Mount Ainslie.
This column has been reporting the research with some intensity (canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/ganggang-wildlife-researchers-strike-goanna-gold-on-mount-ainslie-20160118-gm8r2d) because at this time, high summer, the wondrous reptiles are intensely involved in mating and then in laying their eggs. The female lays them in a chamber she makes in a termite mound.
After today, we will stop reporting them so intensely (for their behaviour will become less newsworthy), but we have been rejoicing in writing about them. As Higgins and Fletcher say, it is exciting for Canberrans who love their Bush Capital to know that this bush harbours creatures such as these.
Just before we go to Higgins' latest bulletin, we should explain today's other picture. Artist Flora Borsi has composed a photographic self-portrait of herself enhanced by a goldfish. It is one of series and you can see a gallery of these surreal selfies at the relentlessly brilliant online arts magazine Designboom. designboom.com/art/flora-borsi-animeyed-portraits-01-21-2016/
We love the portrait because it is so surreal and new. But also because pet owners among us can fancy that Borsi is playing with the old idea that we come to resemble our companion animals (wait until you see her self-portrait with a cat). Over the years, growing jowls I didn't previously have, I have begun to bear an eerie resemblance to my springer spaniels.
If this is her theme, Borsi will be interested in the time Higgins is spending with Mount Ainslie's monitors. Perhaps in time he will look a little like them.
In his latest report, he enthuses that "the recent Australia Day holiday offered Rex and Rosie ample opportunity to enjoy the festivities from their eyrie high up the slopes of Mount Ainslie".
"From there, they undoubtedly could have heard Jimmy Barnes belting out Flame Trees the night before, or the softer tones of David Morrison's Australian of the Year acceptance speech as it drifted across the lake and up the hill (for here in suburban Ainslie we often hear the echoes of lakeside and near-lakeside events).
"Then the Aussie Day breakfast in Commonwealth Park, with sausages sizzling ... would no doubt have sent up rising aromas tantalising the nostrils of any carnivore. This was followed by the inspiring speeches accompanying the citizenship-awarding ceremonies, a time of reflection and enjoyment of what Australia means to new arrivals.
"But no! Rosie and Rex, being of a species that has been here in Oz for a little longer than most of us – ie, a few million years – decided to ignore the human hoopla and just enjoy their own company. Soaking up the Australia Day arvo's warm sunshine ... they evinced their own special brand of reptilian smooching, as the photo shows. By the way, that's Rosie on top.
"Meanwhile, just a metre or so away, thanks to their own efforts and those of a few thousand hard-working termites, the proud parents' newly laid eggs continued the early days of their long incubation inside the termite mound. If undisturbed, the eggs will hopefully result in a new generation of monitors hatching forth around September. Oh wondrous day that will be!"
Rosie and Rex, their nationality established over aeons, had no need to attend the citizenship ceremony at Rond Terrace. But this columnist, an experienced migrant, was there and, as usual, found it moving to watch folk (in this case, 27 of them from 13 countries as different as Argentina and Zambia) joining our national family.
The Prime Minister led us all in the Australian citizenship affirmation. One always recites it with feeling, but what a plain little statement it is.
As an Australian citizen
I affirm my loyalty to Australia and its people,
Whose democratic beliefs I share,
Whose rights and liberties I respect,
And whose laws I uphold and obey.
Am I alone in thinking the affirmation lacks oomph and poetry? Heaven forbid there should be any oi oi ois and flag-waving going on between its lines, or that it should do any bothering of the God in whom fewer and fewer Australians believe.
And yet, would it hurt to give it just a tint of Australian colour, a whiff of Australian aromas? And wouldn't the addition of the words "with all their faults" after "Australia and its people" impart some much-needed charactert?
