Hunter-based author Scott Bevan can. He’s in one.

And better still, the painting is on the cover of the recently released paperback version of Scott’s book, The Harbour.

The book features Scott’s meditative journey around Sydney Harbour in a kayak.

When Scott was writing the book, he spent a night in Ken’s famous cabin studio, where he paints his iconic images of the harbour.

“My dream was to have a Ken Done picture on the cover,” Scott said, who is a Newcastle Herald journalist and former ABC foreign correspondent. 

Sometimes dreams do come true.

“Ken is not only a brilliant artist, he’s an incredibly generous man and a dear mate. He did the cover,” Scott said.

When Scott first saw the picture, Ken asked him what he thought.

Scott told him he loved it.

“As soon as you see it, it’s got all those things that make you feel good about Sydney and the harbour,” Scott said.

It has Ken’s iconic sense of “play, relaxation and colour”.

“But I wasn’t observant enough,” Scott said. 

Ken asked Scott: “Have you looked in the bottom right corner?”

Scott took a look. There it was. An image of Scott paddling a green kayak on the harbour.

“It was a huge honour,” Scott said.

“They say a picture paints a thousand words. Well, it was like a million words to me. The one word that came to mind was ‘friends’.”

As it happened, Scott was able to return the favour, writing an essay about Ken in the catalogue of the new exhibition, Destination Sydney Re-imagined.

“While his picture is on the front of my words, it’s nice that my words are now in support of his pictures,” Scott said.

As you can imagine, kayaking Sydney Harbour inevitably leads to shark fears. 

“We all worry about sharks,” Scott said.

“Many people I’d run into would have a shark story or a shark warning.”

He had a hairy moment when paddling across Sydney Heads, which is about two kilometres long.

“I felt a bump. I was worried because, back on the shore near Manly, a fisherman had said to me, ‘Mate, you’re mad paddling across there in that thing. I’ve seen sharks the size of small buses coming in and out of Sydney Harbour’.”

Scott replied: “I’ll be right”.

Half way across the heads, he felt the bump. 

“I thought, ‘Oh, what was that?’.

“I gingerly took a couple more paddles over this gentle rise, with the swell coming in. And I felt another bump. I thought, ‘Something’s hitting me from underneath. This is bad’. It absolutely panicked me, churned me up inside. I was thinking, ‘Here’s my shark moment’.”

He kept paddling. Then he heard a “roll, roll, roll, bump”.

“It was my water bottle. It was a pretty pathetic shark moment,” he said.

“I spent a couple of hundred days on that harbour, but I never saw a shark.”

Christmas is a good time for comedy, don’t you think? Once you’ve battled the masses at the mall, you need a laugh or two. 

So it’s fitting that Big Dog Comedy will hold an event at The Happy Wombat in Newcastle West on Friday.

So, what about this name, Big Dog Comedy? Does that relate to the famous NBN character? Perhaps it was an inspiration. We can’t know for sure. But we do know that organiser Andrew Milos has “a 40-kilogram golden retriever”.

Andrew is driven to bring top-class comedy to Newcastle.

“Even if a show is on at a pub, I create a theatre-setting and bring in established acts,” he said.

“Each night is fresh and exciting. Crowds have been responding – almost all our shows in 2018 have sold out in pre-sale.”

The event, which starts at 8pm, is Big Dog Comedy’s final show of the year.

“We’ll be donating a portion of ticket sales towards Foodbank NSW,” Andrew said.

More details at facebook.com/bigdogpod.