On reading Jo Ahern’s letter of the 18th, I found myself agreeing with the sentiments about some of Armidale’s numerous missed opportunities for development and for the loss of many of its young people who have found it necessary to leave the city and region in order to find gainful employment.
As a “tablelander” by choice, one who voted with his feet some three decades ago to raise his family in a healthier environment, I have witnessed the closure of many local businesses, some due to personal circumstances but many due to a decline in viability due to a lack of local customers, ie, population.
Too much economic reliance is placed on our education establishments, our top-notch schools and the re-energised University on the hill, a wonderful resource and a fantastic asset, though one whose fortunes rise and fall with the political whims and financial constraints of distant governments who need constant reminding of its actual existence.
Tourism is terrific though narrow in much of its scope – it’s hard to compete with sunny beaches, and carloads of tired kids will rarely be enthralled at the thought of two weeks of looking at impressive buildings and tree-lined gorges. Our Tourist Information Centre is good and well located, though parking is sometimes challenging for caravanning visitors, and the suggestion of its relocation to somewhere less accessible for an amazingly optimistic level of savings was incredible.
A healthy community needs a full spectrum of business and employment, from the most menial of occupations to the peaks of the professions and with all those diverse activities which fill up that incredible mixed bag of economic and community life.
Armidale is not a small and unimportant country town but it has the potential to become one if services, both government and private, are increasingly diverted elsewhere as the nation’s population builds and its non-metropolitan centres increase in size and economic activity, and in political clout. If we continue, as it appears to many, to reject opportunity after opportunity and rely on government generosity, we are destined to become a backwater community with streets full of closed shops, an afterthought to be bypassed on the way to somewhere else.
Opportunity is knocking for Armidale-Dumaresq so we should answer the door, not just sit around complaining about the noise. With that said, I feel that I should follow my own advice further and stand as a candidate in the up-coming local government elections and, should sufficient numbers of voters support my love of and confidence in the region, promote Armidale and its surrounds as a locale worthy of increased investment, leading to healthy growth and continuing prosperity.
Allan Mitchell
Dumaresq
