As if stickybeaking at other people's gardens wasn't already titillating enough (it's almost as good as peering into other people's homes through their curtains), an upcoming Friday evening's Open Gardens orgy in Reid is likely to have a special bonus.
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If I know Reid (and I do, because I am a member of the heritage-listed Reid Tennis Club), on the evening of Friday, 5 December, the suburb will resound to the call of the koel. Reid's koel seems especially vociferous in the mornings and evenings.
Readers will recall how controversial Canberra's koels were last summer. A Liberal MLA (her party's spokes-ignoramus on, of all things, the environment) called for the extermination of this "introduced pest".
Ornithological patriots (including this columnist) were quick to point out the koel is not introduced but a native Australian.
Now that the koels have come back from their wintering in New Guinea, contributors to the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) are posting reports on the their website chatline.
Some of the chatline chatterers are also reporting the calls of their local boobook owls. We have always been blessed with them in (lower) Garran and now we have a Garran-based owl in dialogue with one in each of Hindmarsh Avenue and desirable O'Malley.
Among the things keeping me awake and owl-available in the dead of night are thoughts of Gough Whitlam. If Australia had such a thing as a 500,000-seat stadium, it might well have been filled for Wednesday's memorial service (held instead in Sydney's Town Hall).
Many of us of the "It's Time" generation have been trying to fathom why we loved him so much.
Lying awake and owl-eavesdropping lately, I've figured that it felt wonderful during his prime ministership to have a leader who was learned, cultured. For those of us who were young and smart (and smart-arsed), he seemed like a grown-up worth looking up to, the way one might admire a special professor at uni. Those of us who were enthusiastic about the arts and ideas sensed that, if ever we got to natter to him, he'd know about the artsy things that made our minds tingle.
For example I enjoyed the thought that when and if I had a moment to talk to Gough about my love of the composer Sibelius, I'd find Gough knew about the towering Finn. Gough and I would be able to natter knowledgeably about him, about why Gough loved the Fifth Symphony most while I was captive to the Third.
Since Whitlam, we've never had a political leader for arts-loving, ideas-juggling Australians to worship. In Whitlam, we loved having a national leader who had a terrific, Australian mind, vastly superior to our own. For a young(ish) Australian, it felt comforting in the way it must feel to have a wise, brilliant and admirable dad. It was the kind of respectful relationship we ought always, in a better world, to have with our leaders.
But in my many years of being paid to waste my mind on watching the Australian Parliament in action, I mostly felt myself in the position of having to report on gibberers gibbering. It was like being a worm farmer watching his worms.
Australia feels very dumb and anti-intellectual now. But for a few heady years Gough offered the promise that Australia (in embracing a big-brained, large-minded man) was going to be as fond of its thinkers and artists as it has always been (quite rightly) of its sports stars. Alas, that dream went down the gurgler with Gough's political demise.
For example, how like Gough and Margaret that they took part as narrators in a performance, with a symphony orchestra, of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. The ABC's Classic FM played it again last weekend. Today, if anyone wanted Tony and Margie Abbott to do a similar thing one, you would first have to tell them what a Saint-Saens (let alone a Sibelius) was. Once upon a time, thanks to Gough, we dreamed that by 2014 Australia was going to be far smarter than the mawkish colony it has become.
Some of us would like to go back and live in the It's Time years and it occurs to your columnist that a form of virtual time travel will be possible for those who join the discussed Open Gardens event. We are living in post-gardening times now (people in the newer suburbs have no gardens but build McMansions that take up the whole block).
But once were gardeners, and they made (enduring) gardens in quaint, old, koel-echoing suburbs such as Reid.
"From 4.30pm to 7.30pm on Friday, 5 December", Open Gardens Australia beckons, "garden lovers will enjoy strolling through the tree-lined streets of the historic suburb - and discovering the delights that lie beyond five garden gates."
There is a modest cost to visit these gardens - the local koel visits for nothing. Tickets and maps are available on the day at 46 Coranderrk Street, or 3 Currong Street, Reid.
