The crowned heads of Commonwealth and herpetology

Our two pictures show respectively the owner of the most famous crowned head of them all (yes it is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) and a good-looking commoner wearing an aluminium-and-gold-plated snake crown.

Her Majesty must come first and so we hurry (touching the place where our forelock used to be before the tragedy of baldness struck) to point to today's street art picture of Her Majesty the Queen. She is riding her hoverboard and walking corgis, her inexplicable dog breed of choice.

This column continues to sing the praises of fine street art, usually erring on the side of the shocking, subversive and satirical themes that feral, fly-by-night street artists specialise in. But, though unauthorised, this portrait of the Queen by Kent and London street artist Catman (it has just popped up on a wall of a laneway in Dulwich, South London) is fairly respectful of the beloved monarch. Even riding a hoverboard she remains regal. And of course even London's usually irreverent street artists are probably feeling some respect for her. After all she has just celebrated, to rejoicing throughout her dominions, her 90th birthday.

As ever, this column runs outstanding street art works to show local street artists the sheer variety of what gifted members of their calling across the world are up to.

But enough of this internationalism and back, parochially, to Canberra and to this snake crown that has some Canberra connections.

Pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore snake crowns but this is a recently-made snake crown (albeit paying some homage to the ancients) crested by Dr Steven Holland. It is called the ASH snake crown because it will henceforth always be used to 'crown' the incumbent president of the Australian Herpetological Society (ASH). In our picture it is being modelled by and is creating temporary royalty of Ms Pip Beale.

It is the result of an across-the-campus collaboration between Dr Holland, (he is a Fellow at the ANU's School of Art) and ANU herpetologist Professor Scott Keogh (of the ANU's Research School of Biology). It is part of the vice-chancellor's College Artist Fellows Scheme.

If the snake looks vaguely familiar to intrepid ACT and region bushwalkers then it may be that Holland, consciously or unconsciously, has portrayed a serpent species native to our snake-rich neighbourhood. He has always found inspiration in nature and studied the snakes of the Canberra region for his PhD.

The full story of Steve Holland's crown decorates the new edition of ANU Reporter.

Mention of new publications takes us to the new book Greek Cafes & Milk Bars of Australia. It has been much-discussed here, with some of its dashing pictures, in recent days.

In one item about the book we teased that a book Wonders of Gundagai would be a very slim volume. We had noted how Gundagai's "Wonder Cafe", the Niagara, is celebrated in Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia and we teased that the Niagara was probably Gundagai's one and only wonder. We sensed our taunt might flush out at least one more wonder Gundawonder, and sure enough it has.

Champions of Gundagai have been quick to point to local monumental mason Frank Rusconi (1874-1964) and to his fabled Marble Masterpiece.

Permanently on display in the town's visitor centre, it is a kind of cathedral-in-miniature and celebrates the wonders of NSW marble with a creation that uses almost 21,000 pieces of marble from many different quarries. Each piece was cut, turned and polished by hand by Rusconi as he added to the masterpiece over 28 years. Other works of his include some terrific white marble angels (their wings seem almost to flutter) at graves in NSW cemeteries.

Meanwhile, speaking of cemeteries, that decomposing composer Ludwig van Beethoven sleeps today in Vienna's Central Cemetery, said to be Europe's second largest official boneyard. Tourists flock to the cemetery, as they will one day flock to everything worth flocking to in Canberra, by tram, light rail, the public transport of tomorrow (the columnist wrote, trying to goad his city's anti-tram cult into apoplexy).

We mention Beethoven so as to be to able to return to the vexed subject of concert-goers who spontaneously applaud immediately after movements of concertos and symphonies, not waiting until the ends of works. This controversy has been revisited and discussed here after some barbarians (they included this columnist) chose to clap a little after the first three movements of Beethoven's four-movement Choral Symphony just performed in the Llewellyn Hall. This provoked some tsk tsking.

But the tskers don't know what they're tsking about. As reported here, mid-works applause was OK with Mozart and is OK with some modern musicologists and is even encouraged by some suave concert venues. And a supportive reader points out that even tightly-corseted Canberra audiences often erupt into applause after the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's Messiah, even though this is not a formal pausing place in the oratorio. When we applaud spontaneously at the Hallelujah Chorus (I have even known some audience members to whoop about it) it is because it has given us such a joyous buzz.

Then, sophisticated opera audiences often openly rejoice over someone's outstanding warbling of an aria. Sophisticated performers bask in this and their sophisticated conductors wait until the audiences's open rapture has ebbed before resuming things.