Don’t bother trying to buy red fabric at this time of year (it’s all sold out). Photo: James Coleman.
December is a nice time to drive around and soak in the sights around Canberra.
After dark, every second house will display some form of festive light, even if not everyone goes beyond a string of colour-changing LEDs and a blow-up Santa. Other setups are even visible from space.
But even during the day, especially around the Inner South suburbs of Yarralumla, Deakin, Barton, and Griffith, there are the roadside trees decked in giant red bows.
The tradition sprung from ‘Yarralumla Does Christmas’, an annual music and picnic event hosted by the Yarralumla Residents’ Association (YRA) in Weston Park prior to COVID-19.
Between 200 and 300 people would attend, coaxed by bubble-blowing and face-painting for the kids, a stall run by the Finnish Embassy for penning letters to Santa, and all manner of other performances.
A number of trees around the main stage would also be studded with big red bows.
The YRA then began dressing the trees at the entrances to Yarralumla, at the local shops and around Novar Street.
Residents did the rest, to the point local fabric shops often sell out of red lengths around this time of year and more than 600 street trees across the Inner South sport the bows between November and January.
Diversifying with green. Photo: James Coleman.
“I don’t know that any other residents’ associations have taken it up since then; it’s largely individuals who thought it was a good idea,” former president Mike Lewis says.
“At one stage, we cleared out Lincraft’s entire stock.”
In 2020, the association convinced Governor-General David Hurley and his wife Linda Hurley to get in on the action by decorating all the trees along Dunrossil Drive, down to the front gates and even extending to some of the trees within the walls.
“That was pretty spectacular.”
The bows are sold online and at the Yarralumla shops in the lead-up to Christmas, complete with instructions on how to tie them. The demand was such this year, however, that the cupboard was bare by 4 December.
There was no plan to conquer the entirety of the ACT with them, but Mike says the bows are spreading as neighbours get FOMO.
“I don’t think there’s anything organised. When one neighbour puts them up, others say, ‘Oh, gosh, I should do something about it too’. Certainly, when one or two people start putting them up in late November/early December, it triggers a tsunami of red bows.”
He says there has been the “odd report of people stealing them”, but generally, “everyone is really positive about it”.
“It really does really engender the Christmas spirit.”
Sprawling deciduous trees overhang many streets in the suburbs of Forrest, Griffith and Yarralumla. Photo: James Coleman.
Many residents are worried, however, about what the ACT Government’s push for greater housing density in the suburbs will mean for the future of Yarralumla. Walter Burley Griffin always wanted a ‘Garden City’ feel to Canberra, and wide, tree-lined boulevards were a key part of that.
“It’s a great suburb – like a little village,” Mike said.
He’s particularly concerned about proposed plans for the heritage-listed former CSIRO School of Forestry site, destined to be redeveloped into a mixed-use residential precinct with apartment buildings of up to three storeys, an aged-care facility and boutique hotel.
“It will change the nature of the place, as well as adding to traffic.”
And will there be fewer trees to pin bows to?
“Maybe. It’s always a risk.”
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