Restrictions A Dam Shame

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday November 29, 2001

BEFORE I lived in South Australia I lived at Upper Cordeaux River, inland from Wollongong and behind Windy Gully. Like other Cordeauxites I retain fierce interest in my old homeland. So now that the two smaller dams are considered obsolete and the ``bottom dam" (No 3) only as a standby facility, and everything strictly locked by that national bureaucratic behemoth the National Parks and Wildlife Department, I wonder why cannot NSW follow other states and allow controlled land uses of the restricted vast acreages.

South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria have many walking tracks/trails enjoyed by groups like bush walking and hiking clubs.

Why should NSW be the only state hanging onto the old exclusion policy, when even ``political correctness" believes that keeping Australia's vast bushlands forever empty, and unused, is no longer tenable?

- JACK NIELSEN, Queenstown, SA.