Andrea Herraman, Mullumbimby
Those ornery Queenslanders have recently been spotted going down dead-end streets in Byron Bay (letters, December 5) and few weeks ago they were parking at the end of Grays Lane, Tyagarah getting up to who knows what.
In the decades I have lived here, angered writers to The Echo letters pages have regularly reported sightings of cars with Queensland number plates, presumably being driven by those ne’er-do-wells from 40 minutes up the road, indulging in all manner of dastardly acts.
They continue to blatantly display their number plates when they should realise the fair citizens of Byron Shire have identified they are the cause of so many ills, indicating the idiocy which your writers so often point out.
Presumably the writers, who choose to live in one of Australia’s major tourist destinations, never go on holidays or day trips or enter the hometowns of their fellow Australians or international neighbours or, heaven forbid, Brisbane or the Gold Coast, thereby adding strain to local infrastructure. Visitors go with the territory.
It’s amazing that such a supposedly tolerant population is so intolerant of Queenslanders. Is not statism a precursor to bigotry?
PS: I’m originally a Croweater.
no …its just the way that they spit on the roofs and defaecate on the footpaths…
I can recall people complaining about QLD drivers fifty years ago but I do not think the current complaints are not entirely without basis. The majority of visitor vehicles from QLD are from the greater Brisbane-Gold Coast conurbation. Many are younger people and from a driving culture that is more aggressive than that of a rural area. Rural people are reluctant to honk and flash lights, and drive in other intimidating ways – the might well fund themselves mixing with the victim of their aggression at the end of the journey or in other contexts. This is more an urban vs rural thing than a QLD vs NSW one.
Unfortunately we cannot change our location; perhaps we need roadside machines that shower petals on cars that honk and speed to remind them to slow down and chill out in the rainbow region.