Special thanks to the Bega Valley Shire Council – the use of the shire roads is an outstanding feature of the event. Also to South Coast Police, who worked to aid the organisers to ensure that all the necessary paperwork was completed, NSW Forestry Corp for the use of their roads and communications network, and all the local sponsors who we need to support the event.

Thanks also to organisations that provide officials and services for the event including the various RFS brigades and Bega Heritage Motors, the people who helped as volunteers, without your valuable assistance the BVR would not happen.

And a very special thanks to the community and especially the residents of the roads closed for the event. Your support made our event. We have already started to organise for the June long weekend 2019.

Denise Dion's headline “$45,000 for frivolous questions” ought to read $45,000 spent and still no answers.

After 15 years volunteering with the Candelo Landcare project it is hard not to feel dismay at council's heavy handed approach to recent roadside clearing along Sharpe Street Candelo.

After what I'm sure was a well-intentioned Councillors in the Community meeting, where the issue of “line of sight safety” was raised, council agreed that a significant safety issue existed.

What I fail to understand was council's subsequent response where a large swathe of established plantings were mowed to the ground. Surely the work could have been undertaken with a bit more consideration and regard to the wider issues. 

I know from watching that awesome slashing machine that it was capable of more discretionary thinning, so I'm sure council could have achieved their safety goals without removing so much and by doing so offending so many members of the Candelo community.

Council's road service has over-reached in more ways than one. Once work progressed from the road reserve and into the Candelo Parklands (between Panbula and Eden Street) they moved into highly contested territory. 

Can I remind councillors that the Candelo Area Committee still regularly meets and provides a forum for the many competing interests that use the Candelo Parklands. It might have been a good place to start consulting the community on matters affecting the parklands. 

Council's general manager Leanne Barnes has now written and assured us that  the work was done with no intent of environmental vandalism. She has also acknowledged there were gaps in communication and understanding of the history of the site. I thank Ms Barnes for her sincere apology on behalf of council and look forward to ways that we can work with council in the future. 

We too wish to achieve the right balance between site stability and site safety.

It’s a bit fashionable, and a bit “progressive”, these days to call yourself an atheist.

Such people don’t say they believe in nothing. More often they say they believe in “science”. That a thing is true only if science backs it up.

How can they say that? Where is the science proving that only science is true? There is none.

Such an assumption is the blindest of blind faith. Science-alone believers are the ultimate fundamentalists.

There has to be a better basis of belief to base one’s life on.