Regulation election posters are festooning the nation's and our city's thoroughfares. And so here, to give this column's uncommon readers some relief from the commonplace, is one more of Birdlife Australia's beautiful and unusual election posters.
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Posters along Canberra's thoroughfares are urging us to vote for a Z. Seselja but famously bird-loving Canberrans would love to have the alternative possibility of voting for this charismatic A. Bittern. A. Bittern is an Australasian Bittern, a large, shy, endangered member of the heron family.
As previously reported Birdlife Australia, taking advantage of the election-time ambience, has just created 10 lovely online election posters. All 10 in the series are by Julian Chapple.
Birdlife Australia's Margaret Quixley explains that the 10 portrayed are all variously struggling and endangered. By voting with your "like" for your favourite you will help raise awareness of it. Then, she hopes, we will all talk of our chosen bird candidate to the human candidates who are buttering us up for our votes.
All is explained and the posters are displayed, with how-to-vote instructions, via the Birdlife Australia website.
Take a close gander (pun intended) at the portrayed birds, for each is portrayed by the artist to say something about their needs. And so candidate A. Bittern is juxtaposed with a rice field and Birdlife Australia says a vote for him is "a vote for sustainable agriculture".
"In the Murray-Darling Basin, strange bedfellows are banding together to protect this endangered bird. Australasian Bitterns have found that rice crops are a great substitute for the natural wetlands that have been lost through a combination of drainage, wetland mismanagement and years of drought. Through teamwork and good management, farmers, scientists and conservationists are aiding them on farms and wetlands across the country."
This column, itself critically endangered (as The Canberra Times adjusts nimbly to a changing world), is especially sensitised to these 10 birds' challenges.
And today we have a salutary reminder of how endangered things can be, of how nothing lasts forever, in Mel Edwards' advice to us that Monday's postings to her super photo blog Nah (no) it's Canberra were the last. Monday was the blog's fourth birthday. Her blog has been much praised and its witty pictures much plundered by this column.
She has contacted Gang-gang to thank this column for its support and to report (needless to say given this column's teeming global readership) that every column mention we gave her blog gave it a generous "bump" in viewings.
In Monday's last posting she reminisces to her fans that "It's been been loads of fun. I'm amazed at the photos I've taken (having only picked up a camera – and only an iPhone at that – four years ago). I've been really touched by people's comments."
Yes, her Nah has been very popular with homesick Canberrans marooned elsewhere in the world, pining for home.
"Nah started out as a very lonely person [from New Zealand] trying desperately to connect to the place she'd chosen to live for work, ironically, trying to make it into every other place I could. It then became a delightful habit of hunting, researching and posting ...
"So thanks internet! And Tumblr! And Instagram! And iPhone camera! I won't deactivate Nah, and I still may turn it into a book."
She is still taking pictures and advises that some will occasionally tumble into view at tumblr places.
As a column that has celebrated Canberra's uniquenesses we have loved the way in which Mel Edwards has haunted the city's byways. She has noticed and appreciated unsung places and has portrayed the familiar in unfamiliar ways.
To say a grateful goodbye today we show one of her kitsch classics. At first she teased in her caption that it was the "El Sol Apartments, Tucson, Arizona" but then went on to confess that "Nah, it's the Sunrise Apartments, Queanbeyan."
Mention above of Zed Seselja reminds that on a recent dark and stormy evening at Garran shops I came across one of his young Liberal disciples. Peter Hosking was dispensing Zed Seselja election material.
There was almost no one about a windswept Mr Hosking, who is to be a Liberal candidate for Murrumbidgee in the ACT elections, and he seemed glad of the appearance of a shambling senior citizen (this columnist) to speak to. Feeling sorry for him I took some of his proffered election material and chatted with him, not having the heart to tell him that hell will freeze (becoming almost as cold as a winter pavement in Garran) before I will ever vote Liberal.
Peter Hosking is very personable and I took an instant liking to him while feeling (keeping this to myself so as not to hurt his feelings) that it is always a disappointment when young people are Liberals.
No one should feel like being a Liberal until at least well into their 50s, a withered libido, a soul-fossilising disillusionment, greed, cynicism and loathing (for example of the working classes and of asylum seekers), have brought out their inner Bronwyn Bishop.
Political young men and women of Mr Hosking's age should be bouncing up to senior citizens and inviting "Hey, Ian, imagine no possessions – I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world. Mr Warden, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one."
