LETTERS: A thank you to the Bundy community

I AM writing to thank the Bundaberg community for helping us fight back against cancer last weekend.

Having a laugh around the camp fire are Lorraine Wratten, Mike and Maggie Diener and Donna Havermann. Maggie is a melanoma survivor as is Donna who, when pregnant, discovered a melanoma for the second time. Picture: Brian Cassidy

Thank you Bundy

I AM writing to thank the Bundaberg community for helping us fight back against cancer last weekend.

Around 690 participants in 56 teams walked throughout the night at Cancer Council Queensland's 2018 Bundaberg Relay For Life to raise awareness and vital funds for our work.

An incredible $100,000 was raised by teams who rallied together to make a difference.

Community support is instrumental to our work and significantly reduces the burden of cancer on the community. In the Wide Bay-Burnett region alone, around 1630 people are diagnosed with cancer each year - Relay For Life enables us to reach out to them every minute, every hour, every day.

To the local Relay For Life committee, volunteers, participants, sponsors, and all who donated generously - we express our heartfelt thanks.

A special congratulations to the team of the Bundaberg Police, who walked in memory of their colleague and won the annual Spirit of Relay Award.

If you or a loved one needs support following a cancer diagnosis, please call 13 11 20 or visit cancerqld.org.au.

CHRIS MCMILLAN,

CEO, Cancer Council Queensland

Value in cane fires

THE letter by Bill Napithali 10-08-18, 'Our Burning Issue', ignited a spark in my mind as to the value of things in life pertaining to the relevance of, or otherwise, our by-gone experiences and eras.

Over the years so many things which were once part of the life of regional and country towns such as Bundaberg, have sadly eroded away due to replacement by new and modern methods of production on the farm and elsewhere.

One of these changes being green cane and no fires.

No one would deny that there is value in such a practice.

Yet, with such a process comes the loss of some of our nostalgic sentimentalism which was expressed through the burning of the cane fires as they lit up the night sky, providing picturesque memories for those who captured the moments to share with others in the community or distant places.

Even the black snow surely has a positive place in many people's lives.

The cane fires and the black snow characterise and portray our identity and history which we should preserve for our future generations and people from other lands.

Tourism must surely benefit from the preservation of the art of cane burning.

Thirdly, there is the purification process as the refining fire pervades ever centimetre of growth, destroying vermin, disease and disorder.

There is of course a place for both new and old methods to operate effectively side by side, so that we can keep our history, and yet make use of modern technology.

Let us keep the cane fires burning.

RON MACNISH,

Bundaberg

Look after the land

ON reading two of the main letters to the editor in Friday's edition it just makes me shake my head, it's always the same, we want to take more and more from nature, there is nothing left now thanks to over 100 years of pre-planned destruction of our natural environment by both sides of politics in this country.

This plan particularly started after World War I and accelerated after World War II with the introduction of heavy machinery, these governments who worshipped the newly discovered Keynesian economics model set out deliberately to plunder this country's natural resources to perpetuate continual growth.

We are now reaping what we sowed with destroyed soils, rampant erosion and where once forested land covered much of this continent there is now nothing.

Surface water in flowing creeks is a thing of the past and the Great Artesian Basin once the subject of a great program to reseal leaking bores is now given away to the rapacious mining companies to enable the continued rape of the land for precious energy resources and metals.

Even locally where water from the underground once was recognised as some of the best drinking water in Australia it has either been poisoned or plundered to the point of salt intrusion with the highest salt tables ever recorded.

Peter Pan theories such as turning rivers inland to Lake Eyre just fly in the face of what we now know about hydrology and the need for rivers to interact with oceans and not to be dammed .... which simply leads to more salt intrusion.

And to hear a writer complain about the tree clearing farmers have to cope with in light of the present drought when everyone knows that trees attract water and keep the salt table in balance honestly just defies logic.

Reading some of these letters reminds me of the movie called Idiocracy ... sadly life is very much imitating art.

It is now well proven all over the world that a destroyed environment directly affects the health both mental and physiological of all the animals that live on that land.

Simply put if the land is sick then that leads to sick and diseased people and animals that live on that land ... think about that and the rising levels of disease in this country.

For god's sake (you know - that bloke whom was supposed to have made all this) wake up and stop being so bloody ignorant and change your ways.

If you can track this book down, I advise you to read 'False economy' by William J Lines.

It may assist in cleansing the mind of any previous brainwashing with regard this issue or any of these facts stated herein.

MIKE JOHNSON,

Bargara