Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency. Preference will be give to letters of 100 words or less.
- Read the stories: ‘Catastrophic’ risk to suburb after water breaks through island and Water inches closer as island continues to erode
I’m from Golden Beach. I’ve been here since 2024 after moving from Melbourne.
Golden Beach has been a home to many retired people and is therefore full of seniors. It has been peaceful place.
With the Bribie Island passage eroding, the ocean has been coming into the park on the Esplanade near the Power Boat Club. Now we do not know the future of Golden Beach and Caloundra.
I am planning to sell and move now as it is very hard for seniors to do sandbagging and so on. My husband is 84 years old, uses a four-wheel walker and is in and out of hospital.
Mel Peka, Golden Beach
Without trying to diminish the serious message about damage and flooding, I found the wording in the article somewhat confronting.
“People in tinnies rescuing little old ladies from their homes” sounds not only sexist, but ageist.
Maybe the message would be better directed at some of the people I noticed clambering over the rocks on various beaches with waves crashing over them?
Most of the “little old ladies” I know have experienced cyclones and flooding many times over the years.
Barbara Kavenagh, Buddina
“Ms Kettleton-Butler said sand could not naturally replenish the island when the shipping channel to the east was repeatedly dredged and the sand sent elsewhere” – this sounds plausible, but is completely, factually untrue and has been refuted in the past. Most recently, in the technical report by the Department of Environment and Science on the causes of the breakthrough of Bribie Island.
You would think that Ms Kettleton-Butler would have read this, given her position, or failing that, your publication would have fact-checked these ideas.
Daniel
- Read the story: Greens announce candidates for Coast electorates
I believe the voters in Fairfax and Fisher are fully aware of the Greens’ agenda, as evidenced by the antics of their leader and deputy leader.
As they pertain to be environmentalists, why aren’t they protesting against the wholesale, wanton destruction of north Queensland rainforests, mountain tops, wildlife and birdlife, to place the monstrous wind farms? The word hypocrisy enters my mind.
The word “progressive” opens up many connotations.
Phil Broad, Nambour
- Read the story: Dog owners ‘in tears’ at meeting with mayor
Councils across the country are encouraged to increase building density, which I fully support.
However, with less outdoor space for individual residences, areas for dog walking will become more and more important.
Well-behaved dogs must be encouraged in public spaces.
Dom, Buddina
When did we allow councils to ride roughshod over the people who live here?
I love walking on the beach and to have my dog enjoying the same freedom and tranquility as me is just heaven. Stumers Creek is easy to get to for me and on at least one occasion we were not able to cross to the north side due to a very strong and deep run-out.
As for the environment, the dogs tend to stay on the water’s edge with their owners. The fact that there is wildlife there is a testament that for years dogs have not had an impact. As dog owners know, dogs interact far better off-lead. I have never seen a dog attack at Stumers.
I want to know the real reason for this. It does not make sense.
Maree, Buderim
I am not a dog owner but the pleasure I, and all I know, get from seeing the dogs and owners, and even those without dogs, enjoying and socialising on my local dog off-leash beach, Ballinger Beach, is a joy.
It’s been in existence for as long as I can remember and it hasn’t impacted on the wildlife or local tourism as far as I am aware, so what is the problem?
The beach is clean and the dog owners are responsible. Where is the evidence to support this change the council wants to introduce?
It’s a free, feelgood aspect of living on the Sunny Coast.
Yvonne Walk, Battery Hill
Dogs on the beach should always be on a lead.
Nothing spoils a child’s day on the beach like digging up poo that dog owners have buried. I know people will say “not me” but most will do it.
It is the lazy way out as they are out sight and out of mind.
Margaret Wells, Maroochydore
The recently held meeting of over 100 concerned dog owners with Cr Rosanna Natoli and CEO John Baker highlighted what is either council’s unwillingness to openly share the data that purportedly supports the proposed closures of off-leash beaches, or the simple absence of any such data.
But let’s not get distracted by council’s grossly flawed document. There is simply no need for a Dog Area Exercise Plan. What’s needed is for council to recognise that the majority of households within the region own a dog and that their role should simply be to ensure access to a commensurate proportion of the region’s open space. Dogs and their owners don’t need to be “managed”, they need to be provided for.
Council, either demonstrate the damage off-leash dogs have done to the beach north of Stumers Creek, or simply respect the right of the majority of the region’s families to enjoy the outdoors with their “best mates”.
John Thorogood, Maroochydore
- Read the story: Councillor pushes simple plan to decongest streets
Christian Dickson’s hopeful commonsense fix for parking in narrow streets is not a fix at all as the situation is far more complicated than our creative councillor may think.
So, I hope that the current crop of councillors, who appear more open to the idea, do not follow him.
Some of the implications of allowing people to park with two wheels up on the verge outside their own homes include: damage to the grassed surfaces in the verge often causes ruts and ponding of water; damage to services within the verge, particularly the plastic house drain connections to the kerb and channel; sight distances to pedestrians and children walking or playing on the verge are reduced, particularly if most of the vehicle is parked on the verge (traffic accident statistics show that in Australia one child is killed or seriously injured per week from a reversing vehicle, and that the elderly are similarly killed or injured); damage to footpaths to be fixed by the owners, but evidence is needed and the exercise becomes a frustrating enforcement and financial burden to council; potential damage to vehicles depending on the type of kerb and channel in the street; the street will look congested and even more unsightly; owners using garages for living purposes need to comply with lighting and ventilation requirements and to find a replacement parking space on their property, otherwise they should be discouraged from doing this so that there is one less vehicle in the street; and owners should remove any storage from the garage and reduce the need for an additional vehicle in the street. Why should neighbours put up with the implications of their actions?
Owners could investigate alternative engineered parking opportunities on their own properties, including in front of their houses. Council could use yellow lines to prevent street parking on one side of the street to ensure clearance distances for vehicles and rubbish trucks in critical courts or narrow street situations, and to consider widening of the road pavement to provide the vehicle passing clearances required via a separate rate for the locality.
It is great to see that this parking issue could be a topic for discussion at an upcoming parking workshop. Discussion should include parking across any part of the verge, and not just with two wheels. There are similar major issues with parking on the verge in Noosa that are not being addressed by council.
Johann Holdysz, Tewantin
Read the story: Excluded children claim it was all mum’s fault
I am always shocked when I read examples of a person’s last will and testament being overturned by a court, as in your article.
A court can only hear the evidence of those who live. I have always believed that, no matter what, the wishes of a person regarding the disposal of their estate be their right and nobody else’s.
A mother would only deny her children as beneficiaries for very good reason. She had already stated that she had no ongoing relationship with her children and her grandchildren had been withheld from her. So why did the court deem them entitled to any of it?
Surely, it’s not what the court wants, or what the denied children want, that should matter, it’s what the owner of the estate wanted. What is the point of having a will, if not to ensure the estate goes to those they want to receive it? And who pays the solicitors’ fees in these cases?
The law’s an ass.
J.G.
- Old Origin rivalry
Now that the Las Vegas hoopla is over, Queensland can get on with the serious business of winning State of Origin.
The intense rivalry with the original colony of NSW started in 1859 when the NSW Government left our new colony “broke”, with the first governor, Sir George Bowen, finding only seven pence halfpenny in the till.
When a thief broke into the Treasury and carried off those few coins, the bewildered Bowen had to rely on his personal accounts to pay the state’s first public servants.
Knowing the convict would have originally come from NSW, the flabbergasted Governor said, “The man is a fool as well as a rogue, or he would have waited a better time until some revenue was collected.”
Revenue was raised at Queen’s Wharf with duties on imports by sea and coal shipped down the Brisbane River from Ipswich plus excise on rum.
This was a practice inherited from NSW and its Rum Rebellion.
But Queenslanders could soon make their rum from bountiful sugar cane.
Today, they have our Bundy to celebrate when the Maroons beat the Blues after all those years since being shortchanged.
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs
Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency. Preference will be give to letters of 100 words or less.
