Letters Suicide Prevention
It’s Every Body’s Business!
Save Water. *Shower with a Friend!* ‘MakeitHOT!’
Love and Water! 2 things we simply can’t do without.
Droughts, and now climate change, have taught us NEVER to take water, this essential survival ingredient, for granted. Another form of essential ‘liquid gold’ we all thirst for – is Love! But what do U do? If the one U Love – Turns off the tap! Bob Dylan wrote these most beautiful words… Love is all there is – it makes the world go round, Love and only Love – it can’t be denied, No matter what you think about it You just can’t live without it, Take a tip from one who tried! If I had $10 for every person who has committed Suicide* over ‘Love Life’ related matters* since Adam and Eve started looking at one another ‘with intent’ – I’d be richer than Yoko Ono! But just like all the water in our oceans, rivers and clouds, there’s also LOTS of LOVE to go around! Unless U live in a desert, droughts never last forever! Sooner or later love will rain down on U again! Someone will always love U, including your dog or other faithful pet! Don’t hesitate to reach 4 help*! After this* NOT B4, if UR nearing ‘the end’ of Lonely Street*, check URself in for a SHORT stay at the Heartbreak Hotel! You’ll be in some very good company; half the world runs on broken hearts! I just checked out again yesterday, a greatly rejuvenated man! x They’ve got this brand new sign in every bathroom...
*With some VERY useful tips* for saving water! *Urgent? *Emergency 000. *Any Doctor. *Lifeline 13 11 14 *Suicide Callback Line 1300 659 467. Ad wholly created, written & paid for by sheep farmer Tim Barritt. Barossa Valley, S.A.
Time is a game played beautifully by children. – Heraclitus (c535–c475BCE)
North Coast news daily: continued from page 11 rejoiced at the news of our saved Station Street fig tree (which shares its habitat with the mango trees), I noted the Council tapestry, which depicts a map of Mullum town with a sugar glider soaring over it. But how many sugar gliders are left? The question that I find myself asking is who is the town for and what do we want it to be? Is it here for profit to be made, or do we want to build a lasting community? With each new duplex, a little more of what’s unique about this place gets lost. Early ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote, ‘we abuse nature because we treat it as a commodity which belongs to us rather than a community to which we belong’. The issue of the Station Street fig tree reminds us that our trees, our wildlife, are our community, and should be protected. Cybele McNeil Mullumbimby
Exterminate! No! No! No! It can’t be – another TARDIS toilet block in Apex Park between the existing one and the Bay. This one blocks our iconic views from Apex Park towards The Pass and back from the Surf Club
Help our playscape rule Place-making builds the shared value, community capacity and respectful crosssector collaboration that is the bedrock of resilient and thriving communities. Ocean Shores has a tiny playground for our 3,000 kids and it’s sad that generation after generation of local kids is missing out on a special place to have fun, learn motor and social skills, exercise to get young minds off electronic devices and into the land of the living, as well as keeping fit. Our Waterlily Community Playscape group would like to do something about that. We want to add more playground equipment to the few pieces in Waterlily Park for the health and wellbeing of the many kids who live in the greater Ocean Shores area and gift it back to Council. We’d like to add a roadsafety cycleway to teach our young ones to be competent enough to be safe on our towards Mount Warning. Please go and check out the blue and white ‘temporary’ TARDIS built for schoolies. This ‘temporary’ TARDIS is plumbed in (the plumbing looks pretty permanent to me) and workers tell me it will shortly be replaced by a new permanent TARDIS. Of course schoolies and our many visitors as well as residents need more toilets but not in that location. There are several other options. If we must have a new TARDIS in Apex Park it would be less of an eyesore between the existing one and the road – there is room. The scruffy old toilet block beside Fishheads that closes at 5pm could be demolished and replaced with a 24-hour-opening TARDIS (if TARDISes are the way Byron Bay wants to go), and the underused change rooms behind the surf club could be rebuilt as modern toilets. Pam Ditton Byron Bay
Maintaining rage Like Mungo, I too am maintaining the rage; however, not at the Whitlam dismissal, but rather at the profligate, selfish and self-indulgent personal spending undertaken by Gough Whitlam at the taxpayer’s expense in the almost 40 years afterwards. If there was an Olympic medal for savaging the public purse, Gough would have accumulated the gold at every 12 November 25, 2015 The Byron Shire Echo
netdaily.net.au
roads, too. It will be a great activity centre for all ages. One of the grants we’ve been applying for is via the ‘My Park Rules’ competition. We need a couple of thousand votes to have us in the running for a chance to win the free services of a professional playground design architect, or a grant to help us pay for more playground equipment. You can access the voting link by clicking at http://goo. gl/D7RaU5. This link leads to the full address of the Waterlily Community Playscape
page at the online competition. Please vote for this great community project. We only have one more week to qualify and we need the help of the wider community. Feel free to encourage other local organisations or your friends and family to use the link above to spread the word and get those votes in, please. Thanks in advance for your support. Tina Petroff Waterlily Community Playscape Team Ocean Shores
Online comment of the week Bad call, Byron – remember that the ‘clean and green’ tag is fundamental to the economic prosperity of the area (re tourism, value-added products and services). Q Comment by Liz in response to the
story ‘Byron council downgrades key environment role’ – www.echo.net.au/2015/11/byron-council-downgradeskey-environment-role
Olympiad since 1976. With regard to the dismissal, as Mungo and all Whitlamics know but choose to ignore, the voter was the final arbiter in this sad and sorry affair and in the general election at the time strongly supported the governor-general’s assessment of the situation. And Mungo, if after 40 years of investigation you have finally found proof of the CIA ordering ‘The Dismissal’, please enlighten us all with it. Tim Harrington Lennox Head Q Last week Mungo said Whitlam ‘never bought the theory’ that the CIA made Kerr do it. No, but a year and a half later he demanded a Royal Commission into the role of American intelligence agencies in Australian politics. Phillip Frazer Coorabell
Letting illegalities I don’t always agree with Fast Bucks but agree with the general premise of his argu-
ment concerning the problems holiday-lets owners have in obtaining landlord insurance and the current illegality of holiday letting (Letters, November 18). Several precedent court cases have shown this illegality in NSW residential areas. The most recent was Dobrohotoff v Bennic in the Land and Environment Court (May 2013). This prompted a number of coastal councils to develop policies and change their LEP to allow holiday letting. Gosford, Wyong, Kiama and Eurobodalla have already had their policies gazetted in the NSW parliament. Byron’s policy is on public exhibition until December 4. Compared with other councils the policy is comprehensive, but still does not satisfactorily protect residential amenity and requires amendment. Provision of public liability insurance to protect tenants of holiday lets is more important than landlords’ continued on page 14
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au/byron-echo