The lake is officially open for business.
And for the Chief Executive of the National Capital Authority Sally Barnes, almost anything is on the table.
And yes, that means, potentially, a return of the Birdman Rally.
Wait, really? We could really have a crack at bringing back one of Canberra's silliest and most popular events of the 1980s and early 90s?
"If I had a dollar for every time anyone asked that question!" Barnes says.
"We'd be interested in anyone who came to us with a proposal. So we're not saying no, but when we've tried to initiate it, it's the insurance and the work health and safety."
In fact, she says, the authority has already canvassed the possibility.
"We didn't go out looking, but we started having gentle discussions," she says.
"[The people we spoke to] said, 'Yeah, we'd love to do it, but we just can't make it work'. But if someone came to us and said, 'This is a proposal', we would completely look at it."
Same goes for the much-loved and famously debauched Food and Wine Frolic, rock concerts, drone shows, cafes, ice-cream vans, health retreats, eco-innovations and just about anything that will bring crowds to the shores of a lake that was never intended to be merely ornamental.
Hell, even a brightly coloured burger van in a vibrant shade parked in an otherwise under-used lakeside park would get a look-in nowadays.
Welcome to the National Triangle - yes, the newly renamed central precinct of Canberra that was designed for all Australians.
That area you'd always known as the Parliamentary Triangle? Turns out that was never the official name of the area framed by Kings, Commonwealth and Constitution avenues.
The NCA wants the area to be, in Barnes' words, "consumer-facing", a place where things happen that include everyone - a real national precinct.
It's a far cry from the days when Brodburger, the loveable local burger company, was told - by the NCA - to move on because the signature red van didn't match the nearby dun-coloured toilet block.
Joke's on the authority; Brodburger secured better premises and is now, well and truly, a Canberra institution.
Barnes says it's a classic example of how times - and the NCA - have changed.
"I think Canberra has grown up," she says.
"I think the people wanting to work with us have a better idea about what's probably acceptable, so we don't get into that sort of headbutting thing where after a while you go well, that's not appropriate.
"We've worked with them to find ways to do it."
Back when she was appointed to the helm in 2018, she found herself up against a room full of folded arms and eye rolls every time a new idea came up.
But two board turnovers down the track, and she says timing is everything.
The authority's current board includes an architect, a town planner and an advertising guru who, between them, have been able to focus on how to bring more people to central Canberra, and congregate around the lake.
This was, Barnes points out, always the plan for Canberra's original designers, Walter and Marion Griffin, who had the lake as a focal point, with grand buildings - including apartments - so close to the shores that they would be reflected in the lake's surface.
"[The Griffins] wanted people walking around and enjoying themselves - it was a place for theatre and arts and all the rest," Barnes says.
But she points out that the National Capital Authority is, essentially, a planning body, and is not in the business of large-scale events management.
Rather, she wants to hear workable ideas from outside.
"We really need good partners, because they're the ones who come up with the ideas," she says.
"We don't have a huge events team, so we rely on people who think, 'What a great palette'. You need that small team who can sort of lift their head up and go, 'What's happening around the rest of Australia? Who's doing what'?
"So for example, Wine Island and Van Gogh Alive, and Christmas in July. My new events team can talk to those commercial things.
"They go and find people like that and say, 'Do you want to come to Canberra? Or have you thought about coming to Canberra? Let's make it easy for you to come to Canberra'."
And if you look closely, there are subtle signs all around that the Fun Police have receded, and the zone - the National Triangle, if you will - is well and truly for the people.
There's even a new panel working to reword some of the interpretive signage around the triangle to make it less boring (disclosure: I'm on that panel), and plans for a pop-up cafe by Blundell's Cottage near Kings Park.
"We're a bunch of planners that put in buildings and landscapes, which is great, but people with great ideas come from different worlds," Barnes says.
"We've built a team that can talk to those people ... that's the job of chief executive, and that's the stuff I really like - planting the seeds, get them happening, so that when someone comes in, they're welcomed."
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