As well as my fishing on the Tweed article with Tweed Coast Weekly newspaper, I do a weekly fishing report on a Wednesday morning with Bernadette Young from local ABC 91.7 radio. I had a call from Lindsay (Nicole Dyer’s producer, same station) asking if I’d like to come on air after what the Tweed Mayor had said. I asked, “What’s going on Linds?” She told me that the Council was spending $30,000 investigating the viability of introducing paid parking at the boat ramps on the Tweed at $5 an hour. My jaw dropped! “You gotta be kidding! Sure I’ll have a chat.”
Can you imagine all those cars with trailers parked in residential streets? Some guys go out for up to ten hours, that’s $50 just for parking. The Council will end up scaring boaties away from the area, which would be a real shame, as these guys buy bait, lures, food, grog – you name it, they add to the region’s economy. The Council needs to think hard about this, as one saying comes to mind, ‘Biting the hand that helps feed it’ which, if they go ahead, that’s what they’ll be doing.
If they (Council) need to make more money and make the Tweed a nicer place to visit, let’s start with all the illegal four-wheel drive traffic running rampart in the Fingal dunes. I went for a swim the other Sunday on the sandbank at Fingal opposite the Tweed Hospital. I counted seven cars on the beach, there’s seven fines there (I heard on the radio an Indigenous Elder saying that cars are not
allowed on those tracks) – where’s Council?
Not to mention all the fishos keeping undersize fish. Another thing too, everyone who fishes in NSW needs a fishing permit, more income there.
Then we get to some not so well known boat ramps, like the one at the bottom of Peninsula Drive at Bilambil Heights and another sneaky little one at the end of Dry Dock Road, how will they police all these spots?
I’m really fed up with politicians greedily grabbing money wherever they can. My wage hasn’t gone up in three years, yet everything else has; and now this.
Fishing and leisure time spent along and on our great waterways needs to be encouraged, not treated as a money making machine. Very dumb and unpopular idea Council, come election time results will speak for themselves.
