Bus terminal in mall
Everyone seems keen on food and playgrounds [for the Mall] but what about the shopkeepers? The Hargreaves St Mall should be a bus terminal with the entrance via Mitchell St and the exit via Williamson St. At present buses bring people from all over Bendigo to the Marketplace. If it is about wanting people in the mall where are they going to park? Whoever designed the mall knew how to spend millions of dollars but had little nous. Look what happened years ago in Rockhampton – the mall died and North Rockhamtpon thrived!
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John Grogan, Spring Gully
Bring back Pall Mall
Congratulations to Jan Egan for her many great suggestions regarding the Bendigo Mall. However, I would suggest that the original mall – Pall Mall – is the ideal place for such a vision.
Bendigo is one of the most beautiful citys in Australia, but its very heart of Charing Cross is a mess. Remove all trucks and cars, take on board community suggestions then we will have a dream city.
Brenda Stevens-Chambers, Kennington
Encourage nature tourism
Regional Victorian towns and Centres can achieve so much better with year round nature tourism rather than cruel shoot-ups of native and other waterbirds.
Nature tourism is one of the fastest growing activities in Australia, and regional Victoria has many beautiful wetlands that deserve protection and enhancement, not desecration by a handful of drift-ins motivated by the pleasure of killing animals.
We should be revering the natural beauty of our region and our bird species, not allowing a handful of drift-ins dominate wetlands for a month or two each year, inhibitting real growth for the region. The decision to allow a 2019 duck shooting season in light of numbers and the drought is outrageous and flawed.
Read more: Vic duck hunting season cut after dry spell
Petrol pin money income as a minimal number of shooters drift in and out is unsustainable compared to the damage wreaked on foreshores, waterbirds, and locals health as they live in a warzone of constant gun shot ringing in their ears for months each year.
This year is as dry as an old boot, very concerning to think about the shooters campfires on foreshores with the potential for bushfires. Shooters go unpoliced. Empty drink tins, spent fires, toilet paper, cartridges, bodies of damaged blown apart waterbirds, are left behind for locals to clean up. This will not change and is the reality of duck shooting and the myth of "income for the regions".
Show us evidence. Where is the public consultation? Why do .04% or less of the population of licenced duck shooters hold the rest of us to ransom? Or are the farmers, shooting lobby and gun makers in control? Or is it who you know, not what you know?
Nature tourism and the benefits of year round income for local businesses and employment is preferable to carnage, and a couple bucks worth of petrol money to a few garages as the shooters drift in and out. If it is so profitable why are some towns in demise, such as Boort where duck shooting takes place?
Ban duck shooting and have real vision for regional Victoria. We should not be held back by a smattering of people who enjoy and gain pleasure from destroying nature and blasting waterbirds to bits.
Marilyn Nuske, Castlemaine
Letters must carry the name, full address and telephone number of the author. The writer’s name and suburb/town will be published. We reserve the right to edit letters. Letters which are deemed inappropriate will not be published.Send letters to Bendigo Advertiser, PO Box 61, Bendigo 3552 or at bendigoadvertiser.com.au
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