Community members and clients and patients who attend the hydrotherapy pool are recommended to do so, by doctors, physiotherapists, osteopaths and other allied health workers.

They attend the pool for short-term health benefits and most importantly for the long-term improved health outcomes that the specified temperature of the pool throughout 12 months of the year affords (34 degrees). There is nowhere else in Goulburn that provides this.

Community members and others from far and wide who use the Bourke Street Health Service community hydrotherapy pool do so with a sense of determination for their well being and healing to obviate and ameliorate present and future health problems.

It was reported in the Goulburn Post (9/12) by the LHD that the pool will not be included in current redevelopment plans for the Goulburn Base Hospital.

Who is the ‘spokesperson’ for Southern NSW Local Health District who says the hydrotherapy pool was considered to be more a community service than a health service? 

This, first of all, is an absolute fallacy. Just because "less than five percent of patients admitted to BSHS access the pool" is not the point. It is the wider community that do use the pool that find it the very best of therapeutic options for rehabilitation that is the focus of this argument.

Less than at all impressive have been the ‘consultations’ by the BSHS who say more than "80 representatives from different health departments who met over two Value Management Workshops in February and December last year to discuss included services for the redeveloped hospital." 

How many on-the-ground users of the hydrotherapy pool were actually involved in the consultation? It is the very community that raised the funds for the whole community's use of the pool.

In fact, the benefactors of the hydrotherapy pool are a very long and impressive list, so many individuals (not all mentioned  here) and so many clubs including: Goulburn Railway Bowling Social Club, Goulburn and District Soldiers Club, Goulburn City Lions Club, Goulburn Trout Tournament, Goulburn Friendship Club, Goulburn Community Markets, Goulburn Old-Time Dance Club, Friends of Arthritis Pool Committee, Goulburn Base Hospital Auxiliary, Red Cross Society Goulburn, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Mulwaree Shire Rotary Argyle, Goulburn and Fitzroy Flats, Taralga Women’s Bowling Club, Quota Club, Goulburn Hydrotherapy Pool Club ...

The lack of information and indeed the misinformation from the BSHS is stressful for the users, both locals and those who travel from Crookwell, Taralga and other outlying places.

I most gratefully have been able to utilise the great community service of the hydrotherapy pool for many years now. A spine injury in 2000 and subsequent falls have left me with osteoarthritis.

Not only that, I have come to truly understand the most beneficial use the pool has provided for the brain injured and for psychiatric and psychological rehabilitation for so many. Observation has shown wonderful support for those needing emotional restoration, social opportunity and recovery both preoperative and post operative.

Nearly all ages use the pool and there have been times when people have been turned away because the limit of 12 users at any one time has been reached.

To close: the hydrotherapy pool is financially affordable for the many people who really want to heal from all kinds of life injuries and ailments. In the long run, is this not totally advantageous for the whole community?

Just when I thought Goulburn Mulwaree Council had become an irrelevant and distant memory, a front page story in the Post (12/12) serves to remind us all of the need to be vigilant and courageous.

The story is a classic example of the contempt shown to councillors by the 2008 management team.

They were annoyed at the impertinence of councillors if we attempted to promote policy which reflected the will of the ratepayers. They were more annoyed if there was a challenge to their "way of doing things". 

They were even more annoyed when I challenged the secret report to councillors on the Veolia Multi-Function Centre tender, and we all now know how that ended up.

The new policy on Mary’s Mount Road relating to "back fence to road" has been watered down by staff to the point that there is, in fact, no change. Indeed, it is a complete thwarting of the councillor's intent.

The arguments which highlighted the "Rooty Hill on Steroids" aesthetic, the "Colourbond Boulevarde" and the maintenance millstone around the council's neck have been ignored.

We didn't have to look too far to see a model of what the councillors had in mind when we debated these changes. The Wollondilly Gardens development across the road provided a workable blueprint.

We now have another addition to the Mary’s Mount Road aesthetic, which I affectionately refer to as "The Walled City of Jericho", sometimes referred to as the Merino Estate, overlooking the electricity substation and St Patrick’s Cemetery.

I can't wait for the next instalment, just approved by the council. Maybe they would like to take a leaf out of the town of Collector's book and relocate the "Collector Gates"?