COOLANGATTA and Tweed Heads have experienced border closure before this current farce was forced upon us.

Previously the NSW Government did not want Queensland’s ticks and fruit flies.

So every Queensland vehicle heading into NSW had to undergo an inspection.

Originally this inspection was carried out at the border gates at the junction of Griffith and Wharf streets opposite the Twin Towns RSL Club.

Now I’m not saying that the past politicians were smarter than the current lot.

However, they did see how inconvenient it was for residents of both towns to try to live a normal

life, so the politicians of both sides of the border came to an agreement and relocated the famous “tick gates’’ out of the centre of the town (as it was then) to just over Boyds Bay Bridge, on the then Pacific Highway near Dry Dock Rd.

With the expansion that has happened in South Tweed since those original relocated tick gates were established, plus residential developments to accommodate the shoppers, the centre of the twin towns has become the relocated tick gates

I believe we should temporarily relocate “The Border Inspection Gates” to just over the Chinderah Bridge on the south bank of the Tweed River and allow the Tweed River to be the barrier from the Pacific Ocean to the east with a bridge at Tumbulgum through to a bridge at Murwillumbah.

Between Murwillumbah and the Gold Coast is a narrow mountainous road, with established “tick and fruit fly inspection gates” at the top of the Tomewin Range.

Fewer inspection points will be needed hence less cost to maintain these inspection points.

When you consider the number of local people who are used to just “slipping across the border” to do their regular local shopping and much business and recreation in either of the twin towns, in my opinion it makes sense to keep that border away from the centre of all the back-and-forth traffic in densely populated twin towns.

R A HANCOCK, COOLANGATTA