Its flavoured raspberry, lime, creamy soda, orange, lemon, cola, ginger beer, 6 o’clock lager, portello and dry ginger were delicious, especially on a hot day. My favourite drink after school was to have a lime spider.

One day a big multi national company named Coca Cola bought the Cohns soft drink factory and started bottling Coca Cola, but before long they closed the factory down. Now Coca Cola is shutting in South Australia and I am wondering where next?

Bendigo used to be full of clothing factories. We had a meat processing plant, Mayfair. We had huge railways workshops, state rivers workshops and many many other places employing people in manufacturing. I am wondering how the story will end because I love happy endings, but I get the feeling this story does not have one.

I miss all these soft drink flavours.

We support calls by Lifeline chief executive officer Pete Shmigel (“Plan to address crisis”, Bendigo Advertiser, March 21) to lobby the federal government for a national plan on suicide prevention.

We agree that the time is now to act on this critical issue before we lose any more Victorians to suicide.

In Victoria, we are leading the way in helping communities develop local strategies to prevent suicide.

As part of our 10-year mental health plan, we have made halving the suicide rate in Victoria by 2025 a top priority.

Our landmark suicide prevention framework will roll out six targeted assertive outreach initiatives in hospitals for people who have survived a suicide attempt, as well as 12 local suicide prevention initiatives around the state, in partnership with our primary health networks.

Working with local services, schools and communities, we will take results from the 18 sites where we are implementing prevention initiatives to learn how to best support people experiencing mental illness around the state.

We will not leave regional Victoria behind, and we applaud the actions of the Suicide Prevention and Awareness Network in shining the light on this important issue.

What's the difference between Bill Shorten's stance on the penalty rates debate and a hypocrite? Answer: Nothing.

I would like to add my support to the Victorian Farmers Federation and the other concerned rural and regional representatives (“Taking Bendigo’s need for internet speed to the top”, Bendigo Advertiser, March 20).

The Liberal government’s second-rate NBN plan is not delivering the speeds and quality broadband services that rural and regional Australians want and need.

Too many rural and regional households and businesses are being allocated satellite NBN and this was supposed to be a service of last resort.  

Even in locations where fibre is available just a few hundred metres down the road, people are being told satellite is their only option. And the satellite service is simply not capable of providing the reliable, fast broadband people need. especially now it has become oversubscribed.

The top 10 postcodes for NBN complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman are from regional Australia.

So we know that there are increasing frustrations about cost, about reliability, about fault and about service delivery.

Under the Liberal government, the digital divide between the cities and regional areas is getting worse.