We will come to that monster in a moment after first noting that to mark Wednesday's Remembrance Day the resourceful ArchivesACT has dusted off four more Soldier Settler files.

ArchivesACT's website Repat and Rabbits: WW1 Soldier Settlement in the ACT http://http://www.archives.act.gov.au/repatandrabbits publishes brief biographies of many returned WW1 servicemen who took up rural leases in the Federal Capital Territory under the Soldier Settlement Scheme. One joy of the website is that its abundant maps may show today's Canberrans what former leases their suburban streets are now plonked upon.

And while in suburbia and to digress for a moment, today we run yet another of Thea Katauskas' portraits of characterful old Canberra houses. Her exhibition of a galaxy of these portraits, Red Brick – Glimpses of perfect suburbia, continues at the M16 Artspace in Griffith, but only until this Sunday.

But back to the archives and to how, for Remembrance Day, ArchivesACT has added another four Soldier Settler stories to the Repat and Rabbits website.

One of the stories is of James Archibald Muir, who was allocated Gungahlin Block 105B near Queanbeyan (he chose to call the place "Honeysuckle"), a block that came with what was an unforseen challenge.

"Archibald James (Jimmy) Muir was born at Berridale, NSW in 1889," ArchivesACT relates.

"He was working as a shearer in the Canberra region when he enlisted on the 19th January 1916.

"He served in Palestine as a driver with the Machine Gun Brigade of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade ... He was officially discharged on the 3rd June 1919 and married Hazel Priscilla Neale the following year.

"In 1920 Muir was allocated a 472 acre Soldier Settlement block near Pialligo with the Molonglo River and the Canberra-Queanbeyan railway bisecting it. This [the railway] was to cause Muir numerous problems over the following years."

Yes, Muir faced a threat to his livestock that was unique to his block. In February 1924, he wrote to the Commonwealth surveyor-general complaining that the Canberra-Queanbeyan train running through his block, running far too fast, had killed some of his sheep.

But on April 24, 1924 he lost another eight sheep. His next letter from ''Honeysuckle" to the authorities reported that he'd just had eight more of his breeding ewes skittled by a train. He said it was the third of these atrocities, bringing the toll to 47. He complained that the Railway Department never properly compensated him for sheep worth 30 shillings each.

In time, his file reveals, his perseverance was rewarded not only with a vast enlarging of his hitherto dainty block but also with the Federal Capital Commission's fencing of its railways-vulnerable stretch at an estimated cost of £450.

James Muir moved to Queanbeyan and died there on the July 5, 1980 aged 91. Today he sleeps in Queanbeyan's Tharwa Road Cemetery.

Sleeping, he was unaware of the royal visit that has been thrilling the living. And while on Wednesday loyal human Canberrans were being thrilled by glimpses of the royal couple, out on Lake Burley Griffin the swans and platypuses were being thrilled (or perhaps horrified, for recorder music is not universally loved) by some unorthodox music.

Wednesday was the occasion of the annual cruise/performance of the U3A Canberra Recorder Orchestra. During Wednesday's epic voyage the orchestra of 50 souls was set to entertain the platypuses by shrilling various water-themed pieces. The lake's wildlife was going to be treated to, among other works, Handel's Water Music and the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.

"And we'll also be playing," orchestra leader and recorder teacher Margaret Wright OAM advised us, The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald because every year the captain asks us for it but we haven't rehearsed it. But this year we're going to play it for him, as a surprise."

Up until making this discovery this columnist had been toying with the idea of going on the cruise. But, superstitious (I grew up in an English fishing village where omens were taken very seriously) the prospect of the orchestra playing a song about a ship being lost, on a lake, with all hands, seemed like an invitation to disaster. And so on Wednesday we stayed on the wharf as the M.V. Southern Cross prepared to venture out on to the lake's grey and rainy waters.

But Margaret Wright had explained that any possible dangers of the voyage are anticipated. The orchestra always plays, before the vessel even leaves the wharf, the great mariner's hymn Eternal Father Strong To Save which beseeches God to look after "those in peril on the sea".

Let's hope God likes recorder music. It can be shrill, but He just might enjoy Margaret Wright's Recorder Orchestra because, Wright is at pains to explain, massed recorders are not so milk-curdlingly shrill after all.

"If you have a notion about recorders which in any way refer to your own school days or [shudder] your children's primary school days, then abandon all those negative thoughts."

"Recorders are beautiful and very difficult instruments having a resurgence among retired people around the world. There are 10 sizes, and the Canberra Recorder Orchestra (U3A) has nine of them. Our latest acquisition is the 3-metre high sub contra bass, with its unusual, tall, box-like shape, and fabulously deep, organ-pipe sound."