THE SAINT: It's the little things that mean a lot

Regular readers will be aware of the column's pet beef over the embarrassing lack of drinking water in Queen Elizabeth Park. Then there's that other embarrassing issue in our 'showplace' park, the gaping holes in the mesh boundary fence that get bigger by the year.

And it surely can't be too difficult or costly to replace just one badly rusted panel of Armco railing on the Sandford Avenue railway bridge, less than 100 metres off Main Street CBD.

All of that seems simple enough; the fewer the eyesores the better off we are. Then there's the big ticket item that you'd expect in some Third World backblock - the sewer surcharges in some parts of Lithgow during heavy rain events. It's a decades old problem but sooner or later it must be tackled rather than shoved aside and hoping for a drought.

So how did a complete Bondi tram finish up in a Hartley paddock? Prior to the 1980s before falling victim to relentless supermarket squeeze the Hartley Valley was quite renowned for the quality of the apples produced in its orchards (even famously a case presented to British royalty).

One such orchardists, the Facchina family, brought the tram to a highway side paddock as accommodation for itinerant fruit pickers. In a painful pun snatched from a popular movie of the time The Mercury the Mercury headlined the arrival as 'A Streetcar Named Retire'. Wonder where it finished up.

SOCIAL life has been pretty much in the doldrums in Lithgow thanks to a perfect storm of a rampant virus and popular pubs and CBD restaurants closing down. But things are looking up with the re-opening of the former Gaudry Bar and Restaurant with its popular facilities and a slick new café next door. The nicely updated pub is re-emerging as The 7 Valleys but locals will still think of it as 'The Lithgow'. In a past era it was known locally as 'Aggies', a deference to a no nonsense lady publican who ruled the place for years. Diverting a little it's also pleasing to see work under way on a new facade on the nearby Lithgow Library, in a forlorn state in recent years.

INTERESTING, in fact pleasing, to note a Blue Mountains Gazette report of Council planners refusing approval for a new medical centre in a Mountains town. The Council decided the design was too bland and needed to go back to the drawing board. Seems cheap and featureless is no longer good enough and that has to be welcome. Pity it hasn't rubbed off on some of the ugly edifices passing for new home units creeping in and out of suburban Sydney to the foot of the Mountains.

THERE'S a real and present danger with a lack of centre lines along the Magpie Hollow Road in the vicinity of always busy Lake Lyell. It's a situation that has existed for way too long. On the issue of road problems it's impossible to ignore the ugly crop of weeds sprouting from the concrete median on the highway west of Dunns Corner. Not much of a welcome mat.