It's been a while since I did a blog round-up.
Since starting last Tuesday, the Save Bellingen Facebook page has reached 1,444 fans as of 10.22am Sunday morning. Quite remarkable, really.
I noticed several familiar blogging names appear among the fans: my old friend Sydney blogger Neil Whitfield, Lynne Sander Braithwaite who actually started the Facebook page in the first place because her daughter lives in Bellingen and has just had a baby and Bellingen based blogger Pip Wilson.
Pip has several sites in addition to Wilson's Blogmanac - Wilson's almanac and the Feel Good Manual. He is a member of the Rainbow Region Flikr group.
Pip, who describes his role as web content provision, writing, journalism, editing, came to Bellingen in 1971 attracted by the alternative life style. He has very firm views:
The hospital drama is part of the strategy to make Bello (Repton, Mylestom, etc) suburbs of Coffs, through shire amalgamation, for $$$$$. The battle to save our hospital is SO important. Bello's not Coffs in culture, climate, history & BIOREGION. Coffs was built on a swamp only recently. Less than 100 yrs ago, Coffs people came to Bello to do their shopping at Hammond & Wheatley's. We MUSTN'T let the sharks Californicate our valley. Population explosion/subdivisions is part of the macro strategy - we must wake up to this. Save the hospital, & save Bello.
I can see his point. In Distant memories of a now vanished North Coast - Bellingen, I mentioned that Bellingen's slight remoteness meant that it escaped the sudden development that affected the nearby coast. Gordon Smith's views of Bellingen contains a picture of the store Pip is referring to.
Staying with protest, the North Coast Voices collective has been somewhat stricken with illness and injury leaving Clarencegirl alone at the fort. Hard to get the Premier's attention? Well life's like that in regional New South Wales reports on the continuing efforts to gain political support to improve the Pacific Highway.
Driving on this road north of Kempsey can be quite frightening because of the trucks among other things. Prior to the opening of the road bridges across the Clarence some years ago, interstate truck transport used the inland New England Highway route. Now the ever increasing volume of trucks combines with increasing interstate and local traffic to create a real mess.
I am not sure why people actually use the coastal route. The route that I follow to Brisbane from Sydney is just over one hour longer ( 13hrs vs 12 hrs), but is much easier driving because it avoids the heavy traffic. Mind you, it may not be in my interests to provide details!
Turning from protest to peace, I have just discovered The woman on the mountain. Like Pip, Sharyn Munro is a writer who moved for life style reasons. Now she lives in a solar-powered mudbrick cabin on her mountain wildlife refuge in the Hunter Valley. Here she is, and I quote, "regenerating her property’s vegetation at a pace dictated by ageing knees". This is a gentle blog combining photos and short descriptions.
I discovered Sharyn through Wollombi Valley Online.
Staying in the Hunter, Gaye's Snippets and sentiments continues her exploration of life and nature in the Hunter and Beyond. Like Sharyn and Lynne, Gaye is a grandmother who recorded the birth of her sixth grandchild in January in And Ava makes six. . .. Congratulations.
Mulubinbi Moments, another Hunter bog, does suffer from irregular posting, but is worth checking. I enjoyed the Kakadu posts, while Blogging, internet search engines and privacy contained some thoughts that I actually need to review in a professional sense.
I see that Newcastle Rugby League player Kurt Gidley has taken his blog off-line, so that's another blog down. Last night's initial and very successful Australian All Stars vs Indigenous All Stars saw a thundering tackle from Newcastle and Indigenous second-rower Cory Paterson on Kurt Gidley force his club captain to leave the field.
Craig Wilson's Media Hunter blog continues to provide some remarkably interesting material on media, the internet and advertising.
Finally, Gordon Smith on LookAndSee has been dusting off photos from his archives.
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