Page 1165 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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ceremony at the foundation stone last Tuesday was a much more formal event and not so community orientated as many of the events have been, but, again, it is an important part of this year’s festivities to have those formal occasions and to have the national spotlight on Canberra for that hour and in some senses pay homage to the original events 100 years ago.
There has been a whole range of other things. One of the very successful things going on is the centenary bus loop. It is almost a shame I did not get a chance to talk about it in question time today, Mr Smyth, because I would dearly loved to have but—
Mr Smyth: I was hoping to ask the question.
MR RATTENBURY: I know. But the centenary bus loop is going from strength to strength. Anyone who follows my Twitter account will have seen that we have been putting up regular updates, and the patronage is increasing all the time. We had a new record on Saturday—we are up to around 600 to 700 people a day as the word is getting around about what a terrific service it is. The feedback has been that the bus drivers are friendly, the service is great and people really appreciate it.
I took it the other day to go up to Parliament House with Mr Barr and Dr Bourke. The three of us went by bus to the foundation stone ceremony, and it was interesting chatting to some of the tourists and local residents on the bus who were waxing lyrical about both the convenience of the service and the friendliness of the bus drivers. So, credit to the team at ACTION who have rolled that out very successfully and who are doing a great job to promote it. I am pleased to see it is going so well.
I went to a very interesting event last night. There is a festival on at the moment called You Are Here. It was actually started a couple of years as a build-up event towards the centenary as part of Robyn Archer’s philosophy that we wanted to create events that both built us up to the centenary and also carried us past the centenary. There was a debate held last night held at Smiths Alternative Bookshop about whether 2014 would be a terrible slump, perhaps a hangover, or whether it would continue on after this year. It was interesting to chat with and hear some of the younger artists and community organisers putting forth the positives and the negatives of how next year might play out. There is certainly a challenge for us as a community and, to some extent, the government to see if we can build on the good things that have happened this year and carry the program and the energy forward into future years with things like parties at the shops becoming a regular feature on the calendar.
I note there has been some discussion about bringing back the birdman rally. As members would have seen in yesterday’s paper, I have a personal history there. It was certainly great fun in the 1980s. Whether we could replicate it now, I do not know, but it has been a nice reminder of a little bit of Canberra’s history and those fun times and the large crowds that it drew. Whether the birdman rally or some other event becomes features of Canberra’s forward-going calendar, certainly the community energy around this year during the centenary is testament to the fact that Canberrans like to get out and about and do things. We need to remember that as we think about what happens in 2014 and beyond.
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