At Stage 88, the crowd rocked to Aria award-winning band Eskimo Joe, as well as Cassie Davis and Dragon and a host of Canberra acts.

Festival-goers devoured the city's giant chocolate birthday cake, and gave the Canberra Capitals a rousing reception when they showed up on stage to receive applause forwinning their seventh Women's National Basketball League title.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope thanked them on behalf of the city.

''We have here in Canberra the Canberra Capitals Australia's greatest and most successful sporting team, bar none. It's wonderful for we Canberrans,'' he said.

Coach Carrie Graf said, ''It was one of those epic battles ... one of our best championship wins.''

Asked if she would be back in Capitals colours next season, star player Lauren Jackson said, ''I'd love to be. That'd be awesome, but we'll wait and see.''

Performers around the city's centre entertained audiences with circus acts and aerial feats at Canberra Festival highlight Flipart.

Canberra performance troupe Janine Ayres Aerial Dance amazed the crowd with a Butoh-inspired act called Interwoven that included stunts high above Garema Place.

Ayres' son, Canberra-born Tyler , is described as a ''world-class performer''.

An aerial performer since age nine, he said his stunts involved more adrenalin than fear. ''If you know what you're doing and you're safe with it, it's fine,'' the Cirque du Soleil-trained artist said. Wollongong's Circus Monoxide entertained in Civic Square.

HMS Heidi Hoops, also known as Heidi Hillier, is a hula hoop and lasso expert and she loves her performance persona.

''It's not every day you can walk down the street and randomly arm-wrestle people walking by. I had to invent this character and outfit because I just love it when people say, 'Hello, sailor', and now people say it to me all the time.''

Her fellow Circus Monoxide performers, Charlotte ''Charlie'' Truscott, 22, and Ali Dabros, 20, together with acrobatic duo Charlie and Ali the BMX bandits, described themselves as ''the ratbags of the circus''.

Dabros said, ''We're not really naughty schoolgirls, we're terrors, the class clowns. Here to cause a ruckus and to cause a bit of trouble''.

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times