Unfortunately this resulted in the entrance to the Wolumla Recreation Ground being on one side of the highway and the actual sports ground on the other. 

This sports ground is one of the best in the Bega Valley and is used by many clubs and the local school.

Sadly for the school to now use the ground it is forced to use a bus just to travel the short distance across this very busy road.

At the time of the highway construction a tunnel was built for use by the cows of a local farmer. 

I would have thought at the planning phase that some thought would have been given to providing the same safe passage for the users of this recreational ground.

It has severed the community from their beautiful sports ground.

Australia Day is a great opportunity to celebrate and be thankful for the wonderful country in which we live.

In this we are so fortunate, and yet as a nation we so often give scant consideration or regard for the bountiful blessings we enjoy, and which enrich our daily lives.

On hearing our National Anthem many times on Australia Day, I was again struck by the now cynical hypocrisy of the line "for those who've come across the sea we've boundless plains to share"!

Yes, we have if those who come are tourists bringing money, or if they are offering something we believe will be of value to us. There is very little, if any, altruism in our attitude.

It is a stain of shame on our national character  that we turn our backs on, and ignore, those cruelly persecuted and disadvantaged people who are forced to take the most extraordinary risks in desperate attempts to simply find a place in which they can have a life worth living.  A life which we take so much for granted.

When we do give a token few a toehold, we cage them up in virtual prisons.  And yes, we shamefully incarcerate the children, too.

Sure there must be "processing" and it should be thorough, but it is not impossible to do this in a prompt and compassionate manner. 

As for the odious "queue jumpers" excuse well, when a person is in dire fear for their life, and the survival of their loved ones, then a queue is completely irrelevant.

What would we do if we were faced with such terrible, shocking circumstances?

As we tell the world that we have such "boundless plains to share", why don't we show some decency and compassion and just do so!  In the vernacular we should just "put our money where our mouth is". Surely we can do better.

Of course, we can do it if we really want to. 

Let us proud Australians prove we are a people who cherish humanity and integrity and, in doing so, show the world that our Australia is a truly great country.

Arthur Phillip brought a fleet of convict transports to Sydney Harbour and established the colony of New South Wales, landing at Sydney on January 26, 1788, a date later designated Australia Day.

It was a prison, without walls, but a prison nevertheless and celebrating the establishment of a prison seems very strange to me.

And the prison, then called New South Wales, not Australia, was a British colony.

Australia the nation did not exist until Federation 113 years later. How then can it be called Australia Day and, of course, not everyone agrees with the name; it has been called Invasion Day by Aboriginal people and rightly so, but that is another story.

Surely it is long overdue to make January 1 Australia Day, because that is when the Commonwealth of Australia came into being.