TOO MUCH GROWTH

GREAT story (TC, 28/03) about English couple Colin and Val Smith who moved here to live, after a 2011 trip to our beautiful city.

These are the kind of settlers we welcome.

They are good British stock who fit in well with the good Kenyan, Indian, Chinese and others in our midst.

But, Dave Fredericks in his recent letter, poked a stick at a real problem rearing its head and we will all have to deal with it.

Growth brings eventual un-sustainability as we choke on our city progress.

The wide brown land, in population terms, is a myth.

Demographer and columnist Bernard Salt claims 80 per cent of us live in just the eight largest cities.

Salt selected Goondiwindi as the only Queensland town to meet all his liveable criteria, in a nationwide survey of such areas to move to.

Dave, together with myself and others, could erect big signs east at Withcott and south at Cunningham’s Gap telling new settlers, “Toowoomba is closed, move to Goondiwindi”.

My beloved and I have just returned from the Melbourne International Flower and Garden show plus seeing our progeny who live around the trendy St Kilda area. But no birds are heard singing.

What struck us was how lucky we are to live in Toowoomba, in a little place that would cost more than $1 million in St Kilda.

But when we stop hearing the morning kookaburras, we’ll head for Goondiwindi too.

PETER KNOBEL, Toowoomba