Nowadays it is very rare to receive a personal letter in the mail, and much more unusual to receive a carefully handwritten letter.
The other day I received the following from an ex-Councillor in Tenterfield Shire. I should point out that I had not contacted John prior to receiving his letter and did not know of his existence. He does not say how he got my address. I have John's permission to pass this on:
My name is John Macnish and I was a councillor on Tenterfield Shire Council when we made the ill informed and wrong decision to allow that Mx bike park called Emu Creek Extreme Retreat.[material removed here that may identify certain individuals]
On reflection we should have been more diligent and saved the local people down there 10 years of torment as this ‘business’ was totally inappropriate for the area. I guess the message from all of this is to closely scrutinize the council proceedings when dealing with your case. Councillors are not infallible and when the council staff, for whatever reason, do not follow correct procedures, poor decisions can be made and these can be very hard to reverse.
The locals at Emu Creek under Christine and Brian Baker did a fantastic job of organising the protests and coordinating the action against this park and through their persistence got this venue closed.
All the very best in your endeavours
John Macnish
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John's reference to “10 years of torment” reminded me of the file that I have been compiling for the last few months of people's experiences of living with motocross in many different places. You can see some selected quotes here.
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