FROM various points of view it could be an interesting get together of what are usually warring factions at Lithgow's State Mine Museum next weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The museum agreed to a request from local environmental activists to host the unveiling and dedication of a plaque honouring the work of the late Yetholme couple Vern and June Moffitt in protecting the Gardens of Stone natural wonder and eventually having it embraced in a national park.
But they were hands on environmentalists who were also strong mining union figures who were able to appreciate a balance between competing demands.
Anyway next Sunday there's a plaque to be unveiled at the museum and some are wondering just how lasting will be what is surely an uneasy truce.
There's a heady mix of present and past mining unionists expected together with enviro groups like the outspoken Colong Foundation who have been bitter enemies of the coal industry and its love child, the power generators.
While the museum agreed to host the event the members are keen to ensure that the speeches don't turn into an all too familiar anti coal rally.
Guidelines have been provided to the speakers indicating the museum's wish to concentrate on the achievements of the Moffitts rather than a rallying call to the enviro warriors.
Maybe after all it will turn out to be just a pleasant love in between unusual bedfellows.
It's an urban high risk
ONE of the great mysteries of Local Government in Lithgow is why decades of successive Councils have allowed such an obvious risk to life and limb to go unchecked beside one of Lithgow's busiest thoroughfares. Beside Lithgow Street western footpath and immediately adjacent to the entrance to Club Lithgow is a stormwater drain flanked by a very steep embankment dropping from the footpath. It's a double edged danger; the fall is enough to kill or maim anyone unfortunate to stray off course and in heavy rain upstream in the gully below Hassans Walls the canal becomes a raging torrent from which there is no chance of escape.
The adjacent Club Lithgow has a lot of well oiled patrons leaving that way at night but more importantly is the fact that the St Patrick's School is just a couple of hundred metres away. It's a danger easily reduced with some simple fencing but no one in authority seems inclined to acknowledge the potential danger. Perhaps it's time for an appropriate government agency to intervene.
Cold comfort in The Solstice
THE Winter Solstice (aka the longest day) swept through the place at the weekend and was clearly determined not to go unnoticed. Daytime temperatures in Lithgow rarely get more unpleasant than on Sunday in particular. At midday in the city it was a decidedly bleak three degrees. There was, however, a 25 per cent improvement by mid afternoon when the Mort Street weather station recorded a balmy four little ones.
At least there was no wind factor to make it noticeably cold but it was a day for the great indoors, unless your indoors experience was morning Mass at St Patrick's Church where the heating tossed it in. So it was cold comfort to match the experience over much of eastern NSW where some of the coldest June readings in a decade were being entered in the record books. And while Hobart and Canberra had record numbers for their much publicised annual crazy naked dips we're told there was no such temptation at Lake Lyell. Roll on the Summer.
Community music
HAVE you checked out the Tuesday morning sessions by the local ukulele club at the Lithgow Library? It really is a treat for the senses and the infectious enthusiasm of these amateur musicians is sure to have you singing along. Surely the best free entertainment in town.