Monday October 21, 2013
Dear Ballina Council,
Re: The Lennox Market.
Do letters to council actually ever achieve change? I’m usually such an optimist, but on this front, I honestly have no idea… I’m going to give it a whirl anyway. I am the daughter of a local you’ve probably received a catalogue of hilarious letters from and it was only a matter of time till I climbed on board.
I hear there’s firm plans afoot to move the Lennox market down to the Lennox oval & Community centre and I’d like to write to say I read the extensive report on the matter, I totally agree with all the reasons you’re moving it for, but to beg you to leave it where it is anyway. If you ask me that document was pretty clear that pretty much everyone thought it should stay put except for one environmentalist – and there’s still plans to move it. It’s baffling.
When I saw there was a petition to save it from being moved, I actually didn’t sign it (My sincere apologies to the petition making people). I wasn’t too passionate about it, and to be honest, I thought the reason was for the health of the lake, what with all the car traffic and general effect of human nature making it unhealthy, and I am pro a healthy lake. (I was born here. I have swum in the lake my entire life. It’s never affected me… kjhdfvbvfjghbndfgb.)
But really, unless the council is going to completely ban humans from getting in it, or near it, then it’s always going to have a little sunscreen sludge, and unless the Council is also going to totally create a new road to get around it -further away than the existing one, then there’s just always going to be a little car waste runoff somehow getting in there.
I don’t really think Ballina Council is going to do either of those things though – are they?
Let me digress for a moment and ask you to take you mind back, if you lived here then, to when the Ballina Market was held at the riverside. I would have been in school. It was pretty – with the sun and the breeze and the river! I remember flying kites with my big sister.
And then, for reasons that I’m sure I couldn’t have cared less about, it was moved to another freaking oval! And I honestly I have not been a single time since; my sincerest apologies to the Ballina Market people. I’m sure you’re fun in your own way, but there’s just nothing enticing about another oval market. I see there’s going to be a Twilight Ballina Market back over by the river which I really sincerely wish luck.
Every other local market is held on an oval. An oval where people huddle in to any shade they can find. And that’s what Lennox market really has going for it. Its location is undeniably gorgeous.
Now, I’m all for preserving a gorgeous environment, but if the market wasn’t on, there’d be just about as many sunny Sunday families there with their litter and dogs and sunscreened children as if it were not. In fact, there would be more. More people swim in it on a normal Sunday than on a Market day. I love it, it’s like it becomes this amazing backdrop and no one really jumps in. Which must mean less human interference somehow right?
This area doesn’t need another oval market. Nor, at all, a market held in the bitumen car park of the Lennox Community Centre. That’s really even worse. Or worse still, over, on the oval, by the lovely smell of the IGA dumpsters wafting over while you drink a coffee. Or inside? Is that one of the options as well? It’s a matter of time before the mess of that shits the council even more than the regular market. I know I’m nit picking! I know I’m having a whinge! But come on! Why not Lennox have it’s cake and eat it too?
The market draws people (and money) to our town either way, and driving through town and spying the community centre intrigues those that want to be intrigued.
I mean. I’m guessing you need to make some money for that work of art of a Community Centre that has been made, but there just has to be other ways! I regularly walk past it and there is things on in there that I have no idea what they are. Where does the Community centre advertise its activities? I’m keen to support it and be involved, and I’m sure the community is as well.
Please let us keep our dappled shade. We promise to be good. We’ll all buy solar cars and pick up our rubbish and bribe you with cupcakes and invite you to coffee, and never use a single plastic bag, and pick up all the dog poop. And very carefully tiptoe along the side of the eroding banks of the lake (which only one of the many environmentalists in that document was actually concerned about) and get right out of the way if an ambulance needs to go to the Rec Centre. And teach our children about respecting the public toilets. And we promise to all go down to the Community Centre and support and participate in every event and function and fun group there is. We promise to be a good Community. Please just let us have this.
Pretty Please?
Sincerely,
Shelly Hughes.
