When is an option not an option?
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When there is only one choice.
The NSW government’s treatment of the two people who own properties in the path of the “recommended” second rail overpass option smacks of weasel words.
The government, we are told, has not made a decision. Instead, the community has been asked to comment on a “recommended” option. Within about three weeks.
So what are our other options?
Option C may very well be the solution to Gunnedah’s overpass problem.
We’ve all cursed the blinking lights that seem to wait for your approach and, at the very last moment – just when you are about to get there – they start blinking.
Sometimes there is no train in sight.
Recently, on the day Gunnedah’s Sunday Sessions and Markets was held, drivers sat within easy strolling distance of the markets but unable to get there for a considerable time.
There was no train in sight for at least five of those minutes and a good long wait after that.
And this is a problem that is only going to grow.
As mines are approved and grow, more and more coal trains are likely to be threading their way through town.
And as annoying as it might be for someone waiting to pick up their children from school on the other side of the tracks, or late for an appointment, the situation is far worse for emergency vehicles.
It could mean the difference between saving a life and not quite making it in time.
The argument here is not about the need for the overpass, or even the location, it is about the treatment of people who, decades ago, put their heart and soul into finding the right property and making those four walls their own.
We might all have a great laugh at the Australian classic The Castle, but most of us feel the same way. Our homes are our castle. They are the place we celebrate news good and bad, the place we gather, sleep, mourn and let loose.
Whether they are fibro, brick or timber, the walls are what separate ourselves and our families from the world beyond, for those precious moments that are just your own.
Violeta Hiscock, whose house lies in the path of the recommended option, is bewildered.
Last week, she heard she might be impacted. This week, her house and the house next door are buried beneath a line on a map that reads “access to Barber Street”.
Come on, our politicians. Come clean. Honesty might hurt, but it will hurt Mrs Hiscock more than it will hurt you.
Yes, this is a recommended option, but it’s the only one on the table. Why not confess up front: We have a solution, but unfortunately, two people will lose their homes - or part of their homes.