Blandness spoiling our historic towns

I AGREE with reader Angela Panaretos of Dodges Ferry (“Curb those gutters,” Letters, July 25). Councils are hellbent on making Tasmania, especially in our rural towns, a bland of ugliness with modern infrastructure of bitumen roads, concrete footpaths, kerb and guttering, etc, to the detriment of the townships’ aesthetic and historical aspects. No more meandering through red gravel streets and tree-lined highways.

These changes have also been implemented in our historic Richmond village, described at a Clarence Council meeting by a councillor as the jewel in the crown. We have also seen an increase in homes that do not blend in with our historic village, with concrete paths, kerb and guttering at a carpark area next to the 1823 Richmond Bridge which emulates another part of suburbia.

I also noted Angela’s reference to the wanton removal of 356,000ha of high conservation value forest, by the call of logging tenders by the Gutwein government. After reading Charles Wooley’s

“In the company of giants” and his account of paradise in the Styx Valley and eucalyptus regnans, the tallest flowering plants in the world, it makes more sense to preserve for future generations than destroy the natural and built heritage that defines the state, and us, as uniquely Tasmanian. Hopefully it is not being destroyed by shortsighted local or state politicians to appease developers in the name of so-called progressiveness. Graham Alomes Richmond