Lester Brien, Byron Bay
So Dalian Pugh is not of Green political persuasion? Quack, Quack.
No thinking person can deny climate change. It’s been with us since the Earth first coalesced from the cosmic gases and will be with us when the fossilised remains of humanity, buried deep within a frozen pellet of mud, are plunged into the fiery abyss of an expanding red dwarf sun. The only question is at what point will humanity drop off the planet and what we can do to delay it. With a world population of seven billion heading for nine, the stress is on but we’re talking about rock walls.
There was a point within Dalian’s first letter that I neglected to canvass; there was nothing additional to the opposing views within the second. He thinks that the proposed council rock walling of its road reserves within the area of the rock walled private dwellings out on the Belongil will open council to liability in the event of a repeat of the ’74 event and consequent loss of property and damage.
He couldn’t be more wrong. The reverse is the case. The Supreme Court of NSW Equity Division where any case between council and private rock wallers will take place, will be very interested in ‘clean hands’. They override everything. The Judges look under the fingernails and all. The Equity Judges have an obsession with ‘clean hands’. And council, as a result of rock walling the town precincts in ’74 will come a monumental gutsa if they don’t rock wall the sand-bagged areas at the Belongil and damage or loss is suffered as a result of that neglect. They are up to their elbows in mud.
The planned retreat policy was the policy of nongs. Judges hate hypocrites, they deal with them every day. Further, I take some comfort in the fact that the engineering design apparently has a ‘toe’ by which I assume they mean a small groyne. If that is the case then Dalian the duck can watch his sand recoup in no time flat. And when all the Greens die of soy bean botulism the surfers can extend the ‘toe’ a hundred metres or so and establish a couple more surf breaks which is the extent of my interest in the Belongil.
Enjoy Xmas and hope that the council can complete its groyne before the next cyclone. Their continued existence may very well depend on it.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
