It is a tribute to so many people who stood up strongly to save our hospital led by Sharon Tapscott, Andrew Constance, Frankie J Holden, Save Our Hospital Inc members and our caring public together with the tireless support of Liz McCormick, previous editor of the Merimbula News Weekly and the late Graham Pettigrove who set up the well known Save Our Pambula Hospital website.

From my perspective my experience on the SOHI committee was to strive to gain that rightful recognition of our just cause through our massive petition covering the Bega Valley Shire and beyond. The impact of ongoing photographs, newspaper articles, radio and national TV exposure definitely widened our cause.

Businesses, interstate visitors and even individuals from around the world without hesitation backed the importance of retaining a hospital that provided vital and essential medical services in rural areas.

Our community is now blessed with a first grade modern rural medical facility through the recent upgrades and is complemented with a nurse practitioner full time in the Assessment, Treatment and Care Centre for outpatients.

Our congratulations must be passed onto Kelly Jurd, nurse manager at Pambula Hospital for overseeing the $2.6m refurbishment process with Mitzi Hyland, nurse unit manager, ensuring that a modern medical environment would exist.

A special thanks to Denise Dion and other staff of the Merimbula News Weekly for the continuous support of our fight to save Pambula Hospital. The celebration of the newly renovated Pambula Hospital truly meant a lot to me as I was born there.

Shirley McKenna-Rixon, Merimbula

On behalf of everyone at Pearls Place Community Inc I wish to congratulate Reaching Out Foundation for their achievements over the past five years. We thank and acknowledge the contribution they made initiating and helping to establish Pearls Place Community Inc.

The Foundation's start-up support over a six-month period in 2015 gave us the capacity to provide training for our volunteers, find our first home, establish our management team and fund many of the large and small items necessary for setting up and running a café.

We wish the foundation's members all the best in their future endeavours with the Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast.

Louise Maud, president Pearls Place

Could someone from Essential Energy tell me why it is taking so long to replace a globe in a street light on the corner of Merimbola and Toalla Streets in Pambula? I reported this light as out four months ago and have phoned four times since.

This is a busy intersection being the turning into Imlay House Nursing Home and Pambula Hospital.

If it wasn't for the very well lit pre-school, this corner would be pitch dark.

Des Whitby, Pambula

I write to commend the workers of the BVSC. On Tuesday morning there was a power outage at Tura Beach. My first thought was "how am I going to boil the jug". But, of course there are far more serious things to consider. One of which is far from glamorous but a vital piece of infrastructure, the sewage pumping station in the reserve behind Bournda Circuit.

We can begin to imagine the obnoxious consequences of an extended failure of this pump especially at a time of day when (as one of the work crew said to me) there is a high demand.

In about half an hour the council workers had organised a diesel generator, organised a crew to get it there and had the plant running again. A big well done and thank you to that crew of workers and to all at council involved