Gallery disappointment
Sitting at the breakfast table on Saturday morning I turned to my better half and said “what do you say to going in to Bega to check out the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award this afternoon?”
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“Good idea,” she said.
Trouble is – as I found out when I Googled the hours of opening – the Bega Regional Gallery isn’t open on Saturday afternoons, or on Sundays. That is, when most people in the real world would have the time and inclination to visit.
I was a bit disappointed and astounded by this so I did a random check of a few other NSW regional galleries.
Guess what? Maitland Art Gallery is open 10am-5pm Saturday and Sunday; the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale is open Saturday and Sunday 10am-4pm; the Dubbo Regional Gallery – the Armati Bequest is open every day, including the weekend, 10am-4pm; and the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery is open on Saturday 10am-5pm and Sunday 11am-2pm.
By comparison, the Bega Regional Gallery’s weekend hours of opening are Saturday 9am-12pm.
The only conclusion to draw from this is that residents of the Bega Valley Shire are being short-changed when it comes to their ability to access their ratepayer-funded visual arts institution.
And it makes you wonder what the council must be thinking when it spends a good deal of money promoting one of the most prestigious portrait exhibitions in the country when most people wouldn’t have the time to go and see it.
Anthony Taylor, Tathra
Celebrate culture
NAIDOC Week takes place from July 5-12. It is a time to celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
It also provides an opportunity to shed light on one of most significant issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – homelessness.
Australia wide, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 23% of those accessing specialist homelessness services, but only make up 2.5% of the population.
NAIDOC Week is a perfect opportunity for all Australians to get involved in Aboriginal issues because unfortunately, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are over-represented in many of our services.
Our goal is to bring these numbers down, but we need communities to get behind this if we are to make it a reality.
This NAIDOC Week I encourage everyone to get involved and participate in the celebrations and activities that are taking place across Australia.
Father Chris Riley, CEO Youth Off The Streets
Caring matters
I wrote to both major candidates ahead of the election and had a reply from one.
Of Mike Kelly I asked how he would vote on the question of same-sex marriage and euthanasia when it came to it. He replied that he supported the former. He supports the latter in principle but wants to be sure of protective legislation.
Peter Hendy has made his views on marriage equality known in this newspaper saying he doesn’t agree with it and he will not vote for it, so I asked him about euthanasia. Despite a second letter from me when the first wasn’t answered, he has still not replied.
In a long life I have never known a candidate so careless of the concerns of his electorate. This one has chosen to be invisible and uncaring about interests serious enough to warrant going to the trouble of writing to him.
I don’t vote for parties, I vote for issues, so I’m always a swinging voter and, of course, all sorts of political topics come under my consideration. It matters to me what candidates support or reject. It matters to me that they care about what people in their electorates think about things.
