I refer to the present discussions regarding airline routes in northern NSW and the discovery of an "East-West Australia August/September Timetable" from the early 60s while culling surplus documents.
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The timetable details return routes between "Sydney to North-West, New England & Queensland" (Tamworth, Armidale, Glen Innes, Inverell, Brisbane, Coolangatta and Maroochy) as well as " Southern & Western" (Parkes, Cowra, Orange, Bathurst, Condobolin, West Wyalong and Albury) "Coastal Northbound" and "Coastal Southbound" (Pt Macquarie, Taree, Grafton, Kempsey, Brisbane, Coolangatta and Maroochy).
Sadly, this travel amenity was lost when local investors sold out of the company to a city entrepreneur and was ultimately taken over by QANTASLINK with a massive reduction in services as the regional economies languished due to the centralisation of government jobs to metropolitan Sydney.
Roll forward to the present day and the state government is selling off public assets in urban regional centres to fund motorways to anywhere for every motorist in western Sydney, in a forlorn hope of winning the 2015 NSW elections. The obvious moral to this history lesson is that if residents in urban regional centres want commercial air services then we have to own them ourselves, just like we own the Community Mutual group of credit unions.
So, perhaps it is time for us to discuss forming the seventh state between the Hunter and the Queensland border so that we may use the energy royalties from our natural resources to fund the capital works projects in our urban regional centres that our kids will need to work locally and live locally in the 21st century.
Jack Arnold
Armidale