Watching the doom and gloom @abc730 segment last week was surely not inspiring to many of us who have enjoyed - and continue to enjoy - living in this great city. As we wrote in our most recent newsletter to our members, “We have so many invaluable assets - including human capital - in this region and we need to maintain a positive frame of mind to overcome the current obstacles; just like our forebears did!”
It was disappointing to learn that some managing this drought crisis in Armidale think that watering the trees in our precious Central Park with 4 mm of irrigation water per week is cheering up members of the local community. Well, on behalf of members of Visions for Armidale Creeklands Inc, they are wrong.
What to do? What would cheer us up would be to have all those well-watered Sydney viewers of abc730 come to Armidale for a visit and spend a few nights in our gorgeous region, stay in the highest city in the country, and spend some of Sydney’s fabulous wealth in our beautiful multi-cultural city - the first city in Australia to be the proud location of a University outside a capital city. We should declare that some of our association are refugees - from Sydney (!) - who enjoy the cool climate and the high quality-of-life in this modest-sized city. We like to see on our app each morning “Traffic is light in your area”, the Hinton art collection at NERAM, education, music, light manufacturing, theatre, good health infrastructure, etc.
Might the ABC consider, through its various media platforms, how it might help repair some of the damage done to our city from this short and shallow segment?
Sales and Crabb could bring some laughter - and chatters - to the region for a @Chat10Looks3 show in Armidale’s beautiful town hall. They could chat about water with our region’s avid chatters and those who know something of water in Australia and our region. They could meet a water scientist from Armidale’s very own internationally recognised company with experts in irrigation and water balance studies who could measure the water use of the precious trees in Central Park and advise Council on the need for more than 4 mm/week.
Yes, with our 13,000 ML Malpas Dam, we have enjoyed 50 years of water security. Yes, our various planners might have become too complacent about our need for a future water strategy. But we do look enviously at the secure water supply of another high country city in Australia with its 353,000 ML of water storage, all stored within that wonderfully managed Murray Darling Basin, Canberra!
Perhaps @abc730 might revisit Armidale if it were to produce a follow up program looking at the security of water supply of ALL Australian cities and towns and compare them to Sydney’s water security where the show is produced?
If any readers care about water in a regional city, we encourage them to join our Visions for Armidale Creeklands association which aims: “to assist in the careful planning, design and development of beautiful, healthy and safe public spaces featuring wetlands, lagoons and billabongs, connected by flowing water along the Armidale Creeklands”.
As a reward for those few who might have read to the bottom of this blog, we reproduce a poem from one of our late friends. In light of the current drought and our need for rain, we think it appropriate to reproduce it here.
The late Roger McKnight wrote:
‘Send ‘er down, Hughie’
But we want to go to tennis,
or some other sort of sport,
wails the city-slicking menace
over some old cocky’s snort –
Send ‘er down, Hughie; send ‘er down.
Arr, they want to go to beaches,
petty pleasures they desire,
while me pastures, or me peaches,
or me parsnips all expire –
send ‘er down, Hughie; send ‘er down.
They say that it’ll rain for years,
there’ll be a second Flood.
If all we get is city tears,
I’ll irrigate with blood –
send ‘er down, Hughie, blow ‘em, send ‘er down!
(from The Grass Trees - selected poems Roger McKnight published by Hyde Park Press, Adelaide, p35). Roger McKnight was a passionate poet and dairy farmer from Waitpinga SA, that one of your committee had the privilege to know - he is confident that Roger would not have minded it being reproduced here as we suffer through these extraordinary times.
