They won’t get one, simply because the figures just don’t add up.

Rail in sparsely populated country areas with no significant industrial base is uneconomic. Rail may be the solution to some of Sydney’s transport problems and might work in a very compact country such as Japan with a population of 127 million, but in barely populated rural Australia it’s simply a 19th Century dream that was never going to, and never will, be economically feasible. 

The progress association instead should be lobbying for the construction of a publicly funded European-style autobahn with no speed limit (at least in daylight hours) linking Canberra to Cooma and, more importantly, Canberra to the top of the Clyde Mountain descent.

That would serve 21st Century needs far better than any rail line.

​The amendments that Sports Aviation Flight College Australia (SAFCA) recently submitted, in response to  contentious aspects of their proposed flight school DA for Frogs Hollow, may seem or promise to come closer to meeting "government guidelines".

But what allowances do these guidelines make for a community’s achievements, values, current assets, and the direction that has been agreed and set by that community?

Do these count for nothing against a few greedy proponents, who have no regard for this community, nor for the environmental implications for sustainable life? 

SAFCA have said they want to expand into multiple districts, so if this school is so imperative, let them find more geographically suitable sites, with populations and tourist industries that are used to, and expect, heavier air traffic.

The Bega Valley’s burgeoning tourism industry expects peace and tranquility within this beautiful, productive district. Try fishing under a regular students' camera laden flight path!

This is not just NIMBY-ism talking, this is recognising fast diminishing tranquil, clean private spaces, where folk can escape noisy, aggravating, private-less environments.

The future comfort of this beautiful valley is now in the hands of the Southern Joint Regional Planning Panel, and has become a numbers game.

Every concerned person must swell the numbers of submissions to the SJRPP to convince them of this valley’s merits, assets and value as a comparatively peaceful and cheerful, agricultural precinct, by August 1.

I was going to write to express my extreme fear about the new proposed logging laws as described in a communication from Dr Oisin Sweeney, senior ecologist with National Parks Association of NSW. But nothing I could write would say more.

However, I implore your newspaper to take note of what is at stake here; the fate of our most precious, Australian icon and treasure – the eucalyptus forest ecosystem, and the myriad life forms it supports. 

There is so little left of the original and if this Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (IFOA) is approved, it will be the blackest day in the history of Australia (since European invasion).

I fail to understand how any government could sign away their country's most precious environmental asset, to be pulped.

Please through your newspaper help save our forests, the birds, animals and what remains of the most beautiful tree in the world; the gum tree. Help to make people aware. Time has almost run out.