I love my political cartoons... well, the ones of the Australian variety at least! In my newspaper reading days as a university student, I would eagerly devour the paper... but the political cartooning section would always be one of my favourite pages in the whole thing!
These days, my only exposure to political cartooning is the end part of the ABC Insiders programme where two political cartoonists/photographers run through some of the highlight photos and cartoons of the week. Again, one of my favourite parts of the show.
This last weekend, we went to Federation Square in the north of Canberra. It is a quaint sort of place where there are lots of interesting little tourist shops and lots of little museums and attractions for the kids to do.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when I saw that there was a line up of past and present recent Australian Prime Ministers on the lawn just in front of the sculpture gallery! All of them done in the classic caricature style from the newspaper cartoons! And as a bonus... in colour as well!
So, in the first photo, on the left we have the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison and on the right of him, John Howard (the longest serving PM? or at least the second longest?), the hero of the Centre-Right. I'm not completely sure who is there in the back... ooops!
As we move across... it is John Howard again on the left, Paul Keating in the back (one of my favourite ones!), Bob Hawke... perhaps best known for holding one of the record number of beers downed in a London-Australia fligth?... then it is Kevin Rudd... not the best caricature of him... the others were better done... and then Malcolm Turnbull.
As we move over... we are with Julia Gillard in the front with the red hair, and our first and so far only female Prime Minister... then her arch nemesis Tony Abbott. I'm afraid that that is not the best rendition that I've seen of him either... and then... hmmm... this is Paul Keating (well, according to the sign...). In that case, who is the guy at the back from the previous photo?... perhaps it was Fraser?
Rounding out the display is the hero of the Centre-Left in Gough Whitlam, the central character in the great constitutional crisis where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in Australia) dismissed and dissolved the Australian Parliament. I'm sure that if that ever happened again, we would become a Republic overnight!
What a nice surprise to see all of our past leaders here in such interesting caricature... some of which I thought were more successful than others.
Anyway... I very quickly found that I was the only person who was admiring this garden sculpture display... the rest of my family had discovered the Lolly Shop behind it...