This year's Canberra and Region Heritage Festival has been launched with a dazzling array of attractions.
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The events from April 13 to May 5 range from a tour of some of the elegant mid-20th-century houses in the nation's capital, including one at "Martini Hour", to gazing up at the stars.
There will be a workshop to teach you how to take better pictures of the Milky Way, that spectacular array of stars which radiates over the luminous Canberra night.
The organisers say the overall theme is "space" - but they've taken a relaxed attitude to the definition.
It will be space as in the space above, particularly on the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon (in which Canberra space observatories played a part in getting the unforgettable images to the world - a world where very witness remembers exactly where they were as they saw the pictures a microsecond after Australians had seen them).
At the launch of the festival programme at the Mount Stromlo Observatory were three men who were working at the complex of Canberra observatories when the signals came in from the moon on July 21, 1969.
But it will also be the "space" as spoken of by architects - interior space in buildings and between buildings, citing the city's founding designer Walter Burley Griffin who apparently once said "architecture is a space art".
The organiser of the festival, Linda Roberts, said variety was the thing. She planned to take her grandchildren to the Tuggeranong School House "to see what an old classroom was like."
The comedian and self-confessed design nerd, Tim Ross, is down to give a talk about what the promo calls "the fascinating and often surprising stories of the invisible icons of Australian design, revealing how our unique design histories have helped shape our national identity."
The interior design historian, Catriona Quinn, will talk about how the iconic, bright and bold fabric designs by Marimekko Oyj came to Australia from Finland and how Australian women took to them with style.
The festival extends beyond the ACT border to Queanbeyan and Goulburn.
In Goulburn, for example, there'll be an exhibition of glassware from 1700 to 1840 - glasses, jugs, serving ware and candlesticks brought to Australia.
In Queanbeyan, there'll be a tour of a graveyard which the promo says will offer "fascinating lives and bizarre—and sometimes macabre, as well as urban legends and even a ghost or two".
There will be a Bush Tucker event: "Come and join us for an exciting morning with Wiradjuri man, Adam Shipp, who will show us a range of different plants found around the region and their use as food and medicine by the traditional owners of the land. Go for a forage around the Wetlands and make your own yummy salad to eat."
The organisers think that about 20,000 people will get involved with the festival. Some events are already booked out like a visit to Duntroon Dairy with a walk on an early road above the Molonglo River into Duntroon.
But there's lots more on in the festival.
ACT Environment Minister, Mick Gentleman, said, "More than 200 events will be on offer over four weeks, including fashion markets, design and photography exhibitions, bush tucker talks, guided walks, vintage balls and rare access to some of Canberra’s most historic and interesting buildings."
