For a small country (about 6 million souls) El Salvador has an enormous national anthem. The whole five minutes of it was splendidly played at Government House at Yarralumla on Wednesday morning by the band of the Royal Military College, Duntroon (with cockatoos joining in).
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The most rapt member of the small audience for the performance was surely El Salvador's ambassador Manuel Alfredo Gutierrez Ruiz. That morning as he became an ambassador here his nation became the 100th to have a resident diplomatic mission on our soil. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade alerted us to this, knowing what a centenary-conscious year this is for Canberra.
The ambassador stood proudly on his spot on the lawns during the anthem, the openings of its first and third movements bearing a cheery resemblance to the galloping, rollicking theme music of The Lone Ranger TV series.
As the anthem began his excellency had only been his Central American nation's ambassador to Australia for about 10 minutes, having just presented his credentials to Governor-General Quentin Bryce. It was pointed out to us by Sally Mansfield, the chief of protocol from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, that an ambassador-designate does not become an authentic ambassador to Australia until that moment when he or she plonks their letters of credence into the Governor-General's hands. So, for example, he or she cannot fly their nation's banner on the limousine that delivers them to Government House for the ceremony but then, having been officially accepted, may fly it on the limousine that takes them away.
Sure enough there was El Salvador's blue and white flag fluttering from the bonnet of the modest limousine (a Holden Caprice) that purred up to take his excellency away after the ceremony and after the anthem-playing and inspection of the spruce Federation Guard (their polished boots as gleaming in the bright winter sunlight as the band's brass instruments).
Earlier, in Government House's sumptuous and spacious drawing room, we waited for the Governor-General and for the ambassador-designate (he was one of several nation's representatives achieving ambassadordom at Yarralumla on Wednesday) to arrive. The carpet on which they were to stand was marked discreetly with an X for the spot on which the GG stands and an X for the feet of her visitor. Perhaps this distance is ordained by some law of protocol to achieve the perfect, diplomatic, starchy special personal space requirements (no hugging!) of dignitaries.
We, the media, were stood in a small (but sumptuous) corner, decorated with one of the most wondrous pieces of pottery made. It is a kind of lidded vase festooned with exquisite figures of birds (including a male gang-gang cockatoo). It must be a cleaner's nightmare. If the GG does her own housework at Yarralumla one fumble with the feather duster and the gang-gang's head and some parrots' wings would be snapped off. We discussed what on earth the fabulous object was meant to be and a wit suggested it might be ''a spittoon''.
This columnist was still giggling at that when, as the Governor-General arrived and took her place on her X and when the ambassador-designate arrived and stood on his X, all giggling had to stop. Our Governor-General is an effortlessly warm and nice person and her very brief conversation with her guest (before they went off for a private chat and a cup of tea) was affable.
But everything about that encounter in the drawing room was a little, well, stiff. What the occasion had needed, methought as we wended our way back to Fyshwick in our Fairfax Media limousine, was a dog. Dogs have a remarkable ability, by just being themselves, to take all stuffiness and stiffness out of occasions.
Happy dogs were famously present and roaming around among VIP ankles (you can see them in the old film footage) of the vice-regal occasion in 1913 when Lady Denman pronounced the mystic word of our city's name. It would have been similarly formality-busting if on Wednesday the GG had had a dog with the run of the residence. He, Rex, (the only name for a vice-regal dog) could have gambolled up to the Salvadoran guest to lick his hand.
Even if his excellency Gutierrez Ruiz is allergic to dogs and had begun to sneeze that would have been a talking point. As it is, it is not clear what the Governor-General and the ambassador, with so little in common, could possibly have found to talk about over their cup of tea. Unless it was the sensational overnight news that in an upset El Salvador's under-20s football (soccer) team had beaten our under-20s boys in the Under-20 World Cup in Turkey.
There are many Salvadorans in Australia (the 2006 census found 9400 El Salvador-born people in Australia, many having fled El Salvador's 1979-1992 civil war) who may have felt conflicting emotions in their bosoms (are we Australian or Salvadoran?) when the sensational football result came in from Turkey.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr said on Wednesday that he welcomed the appointment of ambassador Gutierrez Ruiz as Australia and El Salvador celebrate their 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2013.
