Easter Saturday, school holidays, market day in Bellingen. Facebook post, fine blue sky, come on over. And come they did. The most people and cars ever experienced in Bellingen. Cars banked up from Fullers service station, 20 minutes to reach Church Street, 15 to 20 minutes to access Hyde Street from fhe north side.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I wouldn't of missed it for quids, the heavens opened and down came the rain about 11am. Like half drowned rats six abreast the crowd rushing up from the markets, and then to see all that expensive footwear drowned in the river on either side of the pedestrian crossing as they waded across. Then they had to line up for their caffeine. Absolute chaos and lots of the local natives were not impressed. Desperate to get out, took us 20 minutes from the old Bowling Club to Waterfall Way via Oak Street.
A bit of a one-off, but with the ever increasing traffic on Waterfall Way it will become the norm.
The entire commercial centre of Bellingen, apart from two little offshoots in Church Street, is a narrow little street becoming a highway. Maybe down the track with more and more cars a good little business could be flogging gas masks and gumboots.
But for tops our elected members tossing in $25,000 of our money in pursuit of the koala park, which they claim will attract even more tourists, ha ha.
Of course it is a con, using our much loved little bear as a tool to shut down the timber industry. What tourist would subject themselves to so much pain, ticks, leeches, snakes and so many nasties to never see a koala. They propose to shut down 175,000 hectares of the most productive timber producing country in Australia. A truly sustainable industry. As opposed to yesteryear, no industry in the country has stricter controls. All those thousands of hectares of ridge country, once cleared, today are magnificent stands of productive native forests. Timber grows in our area like nowhere else.
But the reality is, as the tree changers move from the city en mass and swallow that propaganda preached by the radical element within the green movement, with their hands out they will suck up the good life and continue to use the farming and timber industry as the scapegoat for everything that is wrong.
As you tuck into those goodies tonight in front of your wood heater, please reflect for a moment to realise that all this is provided by some poor bugger out there often on a subsistence income busting his bum just for you.
Darcey Browning
Thora
