Fitting tribute to Gilmore
As a youngster in the 1940s and a teen in the 1950s, and as a major in history in my first degree, I have always been aware of the well-deserved international stature of Australia's Dame Mary Gilmore.
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Like all Australians of that generation I venerate her patriotic and inspiring poem of 1940, No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest.
I have recently learned that she was also a great aunt of our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and that on November 29, 2012, close to the 50th anniversary of her death, he made a speech in parliament about her achievements and her doughtiness.
The speech is too long to produce here, but perhaps most of its second paragraph is a fitting summary of the work of this grand Dame of Australia.
"She was a prolific writer, a poet, a journalist and a trail blazer in the fields that were (then) strictly patriarchal. She brazenly carved her own path and stood toe to toe with anyone who dared stand in her way. She was a passionate nationalist, a zealous activist, an advocate for workers' rights rather than union largesse, and a champion of the oppressed. But above all, she was a wife, a mother, and..."
Dame Mary Gilmore spent most of her childhood on 'Maryvale' in nearby Roslyn, frequently returned here to her roots, referred to the Pejar area as her "hearthstone," wrote a poem about the locality, and still has relatives in Crookwell and Roslyn.
What a great Australian lady and exemplar to have a humble footbridge over Kiamma Creek in Pat Cullen Reserve, hopefully, bear her illustrious name.
Malcolm Barlow, Crookwell
Getting priorities right
A rural council that has some 2000km of gravel roads to maintain but hasn't the funds to do and has or intends to apply for a significant rates increase to "bandaid" the situation but can find $9 million for a new Civic Centre is, in my opinion, not a good look.
What would the council's reaction be if all ratepayers living adjacent to a non or poorly maintained gravel road refused to pay their rates until maintenance work had been carried out?
At the end of the day what else are the major proportion of rural rates spent on?
Don McKay, Bannaby
Facing climate reality
The very changeable and suddenly cold weather is loved by the politicians.
It makes people think that global warming is not real, so people are easily confused.
The simple fact is that this cold is a part of the atmosphere getting warmer. This causes much more dramatic weather.
A warmer atmosphere causes the weather patterns to move away from their traditional pathways.
The result is that parts of the globe will get hotter while others will suffer periods that are even colder.
However, the overall effect is that the winters will get shorter, the summers longer,and the world average temperature will continue to rise.
Our politicians need to understand this, if they can.
Ken McCubbin, Goulburn
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