“The giant smiley face is about to be inundated so you’ll need to be quick if you want to see it again,” states the message on my voicemail from Associate Professor Mark Lintermans of the Institute of Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra.
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It’s not every day you get news that one of Canberra’s most unusual landmarks is about to disappear under water, possibly for decades. I hop in the yowie mobile and high tail it to the enlarged Cotter Dam, where following recent snow melt and rains, the level has increased to nearly 70 per cent full for the first time.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on it for the last week or two and the water level is getting higher everyday – at this rate it won’t be long until it’s completely submerged,” says Lintermans as he splashes about between the eyes and mouth of the larger-than-life smiley face, nick-named ‘'Macca’'.
First exposed in this column two years ago smh.com.au/travel/blogs/yowie-man/on-the-face-of-it-20120713-220ru.html], Macca is part of an extraordinary 7-kilometre-long network of artificial rock reef to allow the endangered Macquarie Perch (Macquaria australasica), affectionately known as ‘'maccas’' to shelter from their main predator – cormorants. “In the old dam the maccas hid amongst the reed beds which were near the surface but as the enlarged dam has a much higher wall, they are now well and truly submerged, so these artificial rock reefs are the next best option,” says Lintermans who designed the reefs at various different levels, so no matter the water level in the enlarged dam, there is habitat for the maccas to hide among.
Not surprisingly, a giant smiley face wasn’t part of Linterman’s original design but when Mick and Dick, the two contractors finished the enormous task of carefully positioning 52000 tonnes of rock with a diameter of 0.8-1.2 metres in a series of precise lines, they “celebrated by leaving their mark”. While it’s not quite Canberra’s answer to Peru’s Nazca Lines, or England’s chalk hill carvings, Mick and Dick’s land art (or is it graffiti?) complete with eyebrows and blue nostrils is best viewed from a plane, or at least could be until the rain started falling last Sunday.
Following in the tradition of some other Australian sculptures, such as the Wally Lewis statue at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane which was famously decorated with a snorkel during the 2010 floods, before I leave, I pull out my fluoro yellow snorkel and mask and look for somewhere to attach it.
It’s of course way too small for Macca’s oversized head, so instead I ask Lintermans to don it. He agrees, but on the proviso that I volunteer to join him on an all-night survey in late summer to assess the success of the artificial reefs in protecting the maccas from the hungry cormorants, which are expected to flock here in numbers in spring and early summer.
An opportunity to spend a balmy night out on the water eyeballing some of our region’s most loved native fish; now that’s enough to put a smile on anyone’s face, isn’t it?
Mailbag
Tremendous truffle
Phillip Sledge of Kaleen is wondering why your akubra-clad columnist is still diligently writing this column each week and hasn’t “skipped the country to live the high life on a tropical island paradise”. My observant Kaleen correspondent is referring to a typo in a recent caption on the internet version of these pages which stated I had found a 375 kilogram French Black Perigold Truffle canberratimes.com.au/act-news/le-tour-de-canberra-20140711-3brf8.html ]. “At $1500 per kilogram you were holding over a half a million dollars’ worth of truffle in your hand,” cheekily points out Sledge. The caption should, of course, have read 375 grams.
For the record, the largest French Black Perigold Truffle grown in Australia was dug up just two months ago by Ted Smith of Yelverton Truffle Farm in Robertson just two hours north-east of Canberra. Smith “couldn’t believe his eyes'' when he harvested the record-sized truffle weighing in at 1.172 kilograms. “Our electronic scales only went to a kilo and then failed,” boasts Smith who immediately jumped in his car and drove to his local post office to weigh his find. “Being a small country post office they are accustomed to some strange requests but never to weigh a truffle,” muses Smith, who says the previous Australian record was 1.084 kilograms with the World Record 1.3 kilograms (France).”
Plan ahead for
Platypus walk
ACT Waterwatch are holding a free platypus walk next Sunday (August 31) at 4.30pm at the Isabella Street footbridge in Queanbeyan.
What to expect: If you’ve never seen a platypus in the wild, put this event in your diary. I’ve joined this walk the past three years and have spotted several platypus each time. No RSVP necessary.
Tim’s Tip: August is a prime time of the year for spotting platypus as they spend more time feeding and the males are out and about preparing for the breeding season. While they can sometimes be seen in the middle of the day, the best times to look are around dawn and dusk.
Citizen science: ACT Waterwatch partially rely on sightings by the public to help build a picture of the presence of platypus in our region. You can report your sightings via the Waterwatch website which also has a list of some known platypus locations and spotting tips: act.waterwatch.org.au.
Did you know? While recently searching for platypus at dawn along the Badja River near Cooma, Antia Brademann was surprised to see part of the river (which is flowing) frozen. Cold water doesn’t seem to impact on platypus as much as you’d expect because they have super fine insulating fur against their body and their core temperature is lower than most mammals - 32 degrees - making it a little easier to maintain. Given the record number of sub-zero temperatures so far this month, I wonder if any waterways closer to Canberra have temporarily frozen over in the wee small hours of the morning.
Dragon spotting
If you haven’t spotted the ''dragon’' lurking among the dragon trees (Dracaena draco) at the National Arboretum, you only have one week to check it out (if you dare!) before it slinks away into hibernation.
What to expect: According to Jocelyn Plovits of the Friends of the National Arboretum “the 50-metre long dragon is part of the biggest collaborative art installation in the ACT, and possibly the world,” and consists of hundreds of knitted scarves and innumerable squares of creative knitting donated by more than 250 knitters aged from 5 to 101.
Simulacra corner
Samantha Ning, a tree orotection officer with the ACT Government recently noticed this yellow box (Eucalyptus melliodora) near the corner of Horse Park Drive and Well Station Drive in Throsby. “It might be another one of those photos where you really have to use your imagination,” confesses the tree aficionado, who in response to “blank looks from work colleagues after first showing them the image”, resorted to adding the outline of the South American bird to her photograph.
Contact Tim: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write to me c/o The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick. A selection of past columns is available at canberratimes.com.au/act-news/by/tim-the-yowie-man
Where in Canberra?
Cryptic Clue: Nothing to do with big Clive
Degree of difficulty: Medium - Hard
Last week: Congratulations to Tess Neill of Palmerston who was the first to correctly identify last week’s photo (inset) as the sculpture Dancers on a Lakefront by Konstantin Dimopoulos, located near the corner of Benjamin Way and Emu Bank, outside the Belconnen Arts Centre. The scene was easily recognisable for Tess who “enjoys the sculpture’s shadow moving in the breeze while looking out from the centre’s dance studio (and sadly moving less gracefully)” . Tess beat a stampede of correct entries at 10am, including Matt Nagaiya of Chisholm and Brigitte Tabuteau of Bruce who reports that, “at night they are lit up like brilliant beacons.”
Finally, special mention to Leah Toohey who was so excited to recognise the sculpture after walking past it with her seven-year-old daughter last Friday on the way to feed the ducks at the lake, that she submitted her entry two hours too early to qualify. After explaining that these are the first pages she turns to each Saturday after her daughter runs in at the crack of dawn with the paper, I was almost tempted to turn a blind eye to the time on her entry. But rules are rules, sorry Leah.
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am August 23 with the correct answer wins a double pass to Dendy cinemas.
