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IT’S good to hear Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk will be using public transport – trains and trams – to travel to Games events. Living behind Metricon Stadium as I do, I feel the need to point out she might need to include buses in her plans. The train will get her to Nerang but from there she’ll need a bus to travel the short distance to the stadium along the Nerang Broad beach Rd. This road is a very busy one, especially being linked to the heavily congested M1.

Imagine, therefore, how much busier it will become if a major theme park and residential complex – built by Chinese company Songcheng – goes ahead on floodplain near the stadium. The Premier is aware of this development and is said to support it. Songcheng has said up to 7,000 cars a day could be accessing the ‘park’ but there’ll be no dedicated lanes like those planned for the Games for uses such as emergency access. A traffic consultant employed by local residents to look at the plans says there could be gridlocked traffic between the MI and the key intersection with Lakeview Drive in Carrara and additional problems elsewhere.

Perhaps the Premier could consider this as she sails past the floodplain in question and reflect on the traffic and possible flooding chaos that will occur if the plan goes ahead.

YVETTE DEMPSEY, CARRARA

YOUR article on the demise of Southport since the light rail destroyed so many businesses could be repeated next week in Surfers Paradise. A quick walk around Surfers shops will reveal one in three is vacant, and goodness knows how many offices.

If the mayor has his way and takes Bruce Bishop Car Park out of operation for three years, the rest of them may as well shut up shop and move to the malls. For the locals and nonresident visitors will be unable to find anywhere to park near Surfers shops.

REG CARTER, BUNDALL

WHO are the thousands who want to change the date for Australia Day? If the poms had not colonised the country there were several other European countries who would have.

No matter what some people might believe, this wide brown land would not have been left uncolonised, The Brits were the best of a bad bunch of colonial powers during that time.

No matter what date the “change the date” brigade want, the debate would continue. January 26th 1788 was not the day the country was “invaded”.

That day occurred in 1606, 182 years earlier, when Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, aboard the Duyfken, explored the western side of Cape York, in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

He and some of his crew landed near the present day town of Weipa, but they were attacked by the indigenous people living there.

He sailed further down the coast and, at the final place they landed, there were many deaths on both sides, and those events were recorded in Aboriginal oral history and passed down to the present day.

That could be called “invasion day”, when Europeans landed on Australian soil and had a bit of a barney with the local people, and there were casualties on both sides.

GRAEME W BREWER, BIGGERA WATERS

I TOTALLY disagree with Jennifer Horsburgh (GCB 30/01) re her comments that people who earn an income should not be entitled to an Australia of the Year Award.

Even though our brilliant hospital surgeons might earn a lavishly high income that we could only dream of, these magnificent people are surely worthy of an Australian of the Year Award.

After all, these are professionals who save the lives of the public nearly every day of the year and never ask for any recognition.

KEN WADE, TWEED HEADS