It is not clear why Prue Acton needs to characterise the inbound overseas visitor as a well heeled, highly educated lover of good food and fine wines who treads lightly on our pristine Sapphire Coast.

We get the full range of the social scale among our visitors.

But you would expect those championed by Prue to tread lightly.

Many of them will have turned off the ducted air in a three storey home, driven to the airport in a V10 Jag, boarded an A 380 airbus and hired a three tonne camper van at Sydney airport.

They have a balanced view – of course they tread lightly.

Because this group are so highly educated they will already know a lot of things that the Greens are never ever going to tell them.

They will no doubt know that Australia has one of the highest per capita native forest reservation outcomes anywhere in the world.

They will also know that as they travel from Sydney to Bermagui over 90 per cent of the very extensive public forest estate that they traverse is reserved from any future timber harvesting.

If they go to an environmentally attuned restaurant that uses lots of wood they will choose to sit on a kiln dried Spotted Gum floor from the Eden Blue Ridge mill rather than the alternative south east Asian rainforest timbered floor across the hall.

They will know that there have been no records of Koalas being killed or even injured in logging operations in local forests in the past thirty years.

They will also know that orangutans in Borneo are doing it tough.

The Australian Forestry Standard does work.

They will understand that most of the side roads they travel in the coastal forests were built by the forest industry.

When visiting Bega Cheese they will recognise a business built by farmers.

In Bermagui and Eden they will see a waterfront built by fishermen.

Their accommodation will reflect the skills of local tradespeople and they will know that every single man made object they see has been delivered by a truckie. Diverse not perverse.

They will probably know Prue Acton by reputation and that in her fashion heyday one of her signature fabrics was rayon – made from woodchips.

They will know that the fashion industry has long depended on cleared land, high water usage and the use of many millions of tonnes of woodchips in magazines and wall to wall advertising.

Very importantly they will understand that in an emissions conscious world timber does not have to tread lightly.

It can walk the walk as a renewable resource that recycles carbon 24/7.

They will recognise that any green carbon report that dismisses 170 million tonnes of carbon emissions from two fires in its study area is as shallow as the Merimbula bar at low tide.

Many of them will understand that there is room in Australian forests for a degree of wood production given high levels of reservation and the fact that the whole eucalypt estate is likely to suffer significant wildfire damage in coming decades as inc-reasing storm activity generates those fires.

Most of their own countries are increasing wood use from all sources.

Best of all they can reflect on the pristine nature of the Wilderness Coast after a century of timber harvesting which includes $2 billion in woodchip exports for what Prue Acton describes as a product worth only a few dollars per tonne.

For once the pollies are ahead of the game.

Perversity at its best.

Vince Edwards

Eden

Thanks for teachers

SIR,

We would like to publicly thank the Year 12 teachers, Sapphire Coast Anglican College, not only for their dedication and commitment, but for all the extras they have provided, coming in early each day, giving up their lunch hours, the “care package”, cards, prayers, encouragement and support.

Thank you.

The love and respect your students have for you was clearly evident at graduation and well-deserved.

To 2008 Year 12, it has been a pleasure to have you in our home, you are a wonderful group and have much to offer the world.

We wish you every success.

Darren and Cherie Mitchell

Bega

One-sided debate

SIR,

I attended the public meeting at Pambula on Thursday night and could not believe the one-sidedness and lack of debate allowed.

When I tried to debunk some of the half-truths that were being disseminated I was glared at and shouted down by the crowd around me.

I thought the whole region was invited to the meeting but obviously were not to have their own point of view.

My 19 year old daughter, who attended Lumen Christi and has most of her friends in Pambula, Tura and Eden, asked me how it went.

When I told her, she replied that she and her friends cannot understand why some people seem so determined to stop something that is so much better than what we have now.

This is the generation that is going to either benefit from a new facility or lose out because some people can’t see past their own noses.

By the way, I have been talking to some retired midwives and nurses and have discovered that, until recent years, Pambula Hospital was bypassed by most people for maternity services and they came straight through to Bega.

Yes, even from Mallacoota.

This was on roads that were winding and narrow and much worse than today.

(I can remember it taking 35 minutes to get to Merimbula when I was a child). They also told me that often they would send women back to Pambula for post-natal care only to have them turn up in an ambulance in Bega the next morning.

Hopefully, this will help the scaremongering to cease.

Sharon McMahon

Bega

Logging

sadness

SIR,

How sad it is to see Forests NSW logging the small patch of remnant bush adjacent to the Bermagui River.

It seemed a miracle when evidence of a surviving Koala population was discovered in the area but that, like so much which competes with the fiscal bottom line these days, is obviously of no consequence.

How disheartening it must be for all those young people who have been involved with The Crossing project, which emphasises on the importance of responsible environmental custodianship, to witness their neighbourhood and so many habitats being destroyed.

Unfortunately it’s not just Koala habitat.

What about the population of Bermagui? A glance at a map will show you the small network of creeks that feed the Bermagui River.

The main ones are already only trickling through dams and farmland and in such a dry year it doesn’t take much imagination to see what the result of further deforestation, almost right on the outskirts of the town, will result in.

I wonder if the people who make decisions to conduct their businesses like this ever watch the news or have the slightest inkling of what’s going on in the world at present.

The times are a’changing fellas and we’ve got to change with them.

Robert Connal

Quaama

Dental help

SIR,

Thousands of your readers on Health Care Cards and their dependants are entitled to public dental services.

The position of full-time dental officer at the Pambula Community Centre has been vacant for years.

Locum and part-time help has been available only sporadically.

When is the GSAHS going to get serious about this area of their responsibility and appoint a full time dentist?

Grant Keogh BDS MDSc

Merimbula.