Cars eating Merimbula
I have visited Merimbula for 20 years and I remember when it was an attractive country town. It was a place of quiet human scale designed for people living in a beautiful environment where shopping was a social activity done by walking.
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My recent visit shows those days are behind us. Your town is now in the hands of traffic engineers. They have driven a traffic sewer through its heart. They are making Merimbula into car parks and creating the ugly, anti-social urban landscape I am sure many residents left the cities to escape.
Yes, lots of parking outside every store feels good. But, the Great God Car demands many sacrifices. Before the traffic engineers get their next great idea to make our lives easier, faster and efficient, please take a good look at what they've done to your town and ask if Merimbula is for cars or people.
Ian Morgans, Mordialloc, Victoria
Invitation to view
I do not usually take the trouble to respond to letters of the type written by Mr Box (MNW, 14/11). In this case however I am smarting somewhat after being told by another “you only want to save your views” while doing the rounds with our petition.
I invite Mr Box to visit my home and view the area of unsightly re-growth of former pasture that NTBRA wishes to rehabilitate. As clearly spelled out in our petition we seek to preserve established Banksias and melaleucas and establish strategic areas of low flowering natives commensurate with progressive reduction of dead and dying vegetation and invasive species.
These proposals do not and cannot in any way reduce or increase our views.
Mr Box knows where I live – he daily walks his little dog past and on occasion I have greeted him cordially as one does to all in this wonderful neighborhood. Following his visit I would expect Mr Box to pen an abject apology.
Chris Young, secretary, NTBRA
Support cut down
New industry funded research that shows native forest logging no longer has public support comes as no surprise.
The study was funded by Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) , an industry body financed by the federal government, member levies and research grants.
“Community perceptions of Australia’s forest, wood and paper industries: implications for social license to operate” surveyed over 12,000 people from throughout Australia and found 70 per cent of urban, and 65 per cent of rural Australians find logging of native forests unacceptable. This compares to just 10 per cent of urban, and 17 per cent of rural Australians finding it acceptable.
The study only examined the native forest logging industry in general and did not specifically examine attitudes to woodchipping. I have absolutely no doubt that an examination of attitudes to woodchipping would produce even more negative results.
The industry itself has virtually admitted this and understands that it has a problem. While we don’t have specific and detailed data for this region, there is no reason to believe attitudes to native forest logging would be any more positive here.
Indeed, our direct experience of decades of the most intensive logging in the state and and equal to the worst in Australia gives us every reason to expect that support would be lower.
The Eden chipmill was Australia’s first export woodchip mill and it’s time for it to transition to plantation wood or close. I appeal to candidates in the coming state and federal elections to take note of these results. It is not just a hard core of conservationists who’ve had enough of this industry.
Harriett Swift, Chipstop convener
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