In its service lifetime an estimated five million souls will fly in the swashbuckling new Qantas ''Flying Art Aircraft'' that was shown off on Monday to the media. The Boeing 737-800 was posed, dashing and glossy, in an immense (room for a compact suburb) hangar at Canberra Airport.
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But how many of the five million souls, even if they have to walk across the tarmac to the aircraft, will notice that it is a piece of flying art? The indigenous art work that has been adapted to decorate it is so understated and competes for fuselage space with so much regular Qantas livery that this reporter was underwhelmed.
This underwhelming feeling has to do with how the previous three Qantas flying art aircraft in the series are all psychedelically exciting to look at. They use almost all of the ''canvas'' of their crafts' steely flanks (everything but the sacred ''flying kangaroo'' tail) to display the art.
On the new aircraft named Mendoowoorrji the artwork, based on a work by the late West Australian Aboriginal painter Paddy Bedford, is modest and shy. Predominantly black and cream (making the plane look a little like an enormous killer whale), it is only about as conspicuous as an unostentatious tattoo on the torso of a pale, shirtless bodybuilder.
But in matters of art we must pretend to defer to Ron Radford, director of the National Gallery of Australia.
''What an impact it makes!'' he rejoiced on Monday.
''The painting Medicine Pocket on which the livery design is based hangs in the indigenous galleries of the National Gallery of Australia … The plane's design takes its name from Paddy Bedford's mother's country in the east Kimberley.
''I'm informed by the Bedford family that Paddy always dreamt of having a painting on an aircraft from when he heard of the [three] earlier ones. And so he'd be rather pleased that his long-time dream has now come true. And I know that when I think of all the four I think [gesturing at the handsome, Seattle-crafted juggernaut behind him] this is the finest of them.''
Once I'd finished muttering my disagreement (words muffled because of a mouth filled with one of the splendid apple muffins with which Qantas was bribing the media) I put my reservations to Ros Moriarty. She is creative director of Balarinji, the design studio that has designed the four Qantas flying art aircraft.
But this one, your fourth, doesn't look as exciting as the previous three, we challenged her, brushing the muffin crumbs from our shirtfronts.
''We hope,'' she responded, ''that each of the four is a design for its times.''
She explained that this time they had been looking for a West Australian work and for a contemporary-looking design that sang about the Qantas ''brand''. It is singing about the company's ''sophisticated positioning in the global marketplace'' by using just the sort of contemporary Aboriginal art that excites sophisticated, 21st-century ''international collectors'' of the works.
For her the Bedford work and the livery based on it have ''a dramatic simplicity'' that may be just a little ''ahead'', aesthetically, of what the ''casual observer'' (like her muffin-stained interviewer) expects. She is sure this new flying work of art will ''grow'' on us.
Meanwhile it has already grown on Paddy Bedford's people. Mendoowoorrji has just zoomed back from Broome where Moriarty saw it giving great delight.
People from Paddy Bedford's mother's country made long, long journeys in cars to get to Broome. (''Broome is the plane's spiritual home, really.'')
''It was a great feeling. There were mums with babies with the babies reaching out to touch the aircraft,'' Moriarty said.
Slowly, Marion Mahony Griffin gets name back
At a seance in January dear Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961) said to me, ''For the love of Mike! Everyone spells my name incorrectly. It's Mahony, not Mahoney. Ian, honey, do you think you could use the Centenary year to nag everyone who gets it wrong into getting it right? How can I rest content if people can't pay me that simple courtesy?''
So we took on this sacred obligation and although there's still lots of work to do (for example Craft ACT's website is presently advertising an exhibition of potter Cathy Franzi's ''response to Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin's grand vision'') we've had lots of successes.
We'd nagged the National Capital Authority about the ''Mahoney'' on the plate under Marion's fine 1991 bust by Ninon Geier on display at the National Capital Exhibition at Regatta Point. Now Roslyn Hull, head of NCA Education and Outreach advises ''Marion asked me to let you know that her name is now spelt correctly and she rests content. You may even notice a trace of a smile on her face next time you visit.''
Hull has sent me a picture of the corrected and amplified plate. Now it reads ''Marion Lucy Mahony'' and commends Marion as an architect in her own right, as the wife of Walter Burley Griffin, ''and illustrator of his plans for the winning design for Canberra''.
