David Bancroft's editorial in The Daily Examiner on 7 May 2010:
A FEW years after leaving home I found myself living in a small cottage in Lawrence that real estate agents might have called a renovator's delight.
There were cracks in the wall large enough for birds to fly through, there were windows missing, others painted blue, a giant peace sign painted on the roof from some previous hippie tenants and a fuel stove that had to be lit each afternoon to provide hot water.
Some of the hot plates on an electric stove didn't work, but the massive fall in the floor came in handy to let the rainwater that came through the roof drain away.
It even had a nest of carpet snakes in the ceiling.
But for all its failings, it was a great place to live, probably the best site on the Clarence River.
You could cast a line from the back verandah, but it was out of flood; it had a huge yard and the snakes became something akin to pets.
One of the real charms of the place was the view it had over a wetland not far from the Lawrence ferry.
Each year thousands of water birds would fly in from all over the world and the trees turned white with the mass of egrets congregating there.
It is that wetland that is now potentially threatened by a subdivision proposal to be considered by the Department of Planning.
The department should demonstrate extreme sensitivity dealing with the application, as the wetland is probably one of the most valuable and vulnerable in the Valley.
It cannot be allowed to be damaged.
No comments:
Post a Comment