It was sort of second prize after Orange had missed out getting a college of advanced education that local MP, deputy premier and Minister for Education, Sir Charles Cutler, promised to Bathurst to help the Country Party win the seat that had been held for years for Labor by Gus Kelly.

The Country Party’s Clive Osborne went on to win Bathurst with a 27 per cent swing in the 1968 elections and the city got the college but Orange people weren’t as gracious after missing out and slashed Sir Charles’ huge majority, giving him a big fright.

He took immediate action to restore his popularity and announced Orange was to get an agricultural college.

The college was earmarked to go to Tamworth, a seat held by the then Agriculture Minister Bill Chaffey, but Sir Charles took it off him and delivered it here.

Bill Chaffey was furious about the loss to Orange but was appeased somewhat when Sir Charles pulled some more strings to give Tamworth a new dam to be named Chaffey after the minister.

This columnist had put up an extensive media campaign to win the college of advanced education.

The campaign resulted in the city council withdrawing initial support for Bathurst and the establishment of a community committee to fight for the college but at times the campaign was embarrassing Sir Charles.

My newspaper stories countered arguments that Bathurst was a better site mainly because of its teachers’ college and that federal help was only available there because of that.

But the federal education minister John Gorton said the decision was one solely for the state minister and subsequent newspaper stories promoting that resulted in newspaper board chairman and Country Party president of the NSW Legislative Council Sir Harry Budd shutting down my media campaign.

I was told it had been a great campaign but nothing more was to be written about the college. It was going to Bathurst and that was that.

As they say, them’s the breaks, but the hard work put in to get the college of advanced education at least resulted in securing the Orange Agricultural College that eventually came under the control of Charles Sturt University, the organisation that’s now transferring the farm courses to Wagga, which is a shame.

But it’s ironic Charles Sturt University at Bathurst began life as Mitchell College of Advanced Education, the college Orange had fought so hard to get but lost through pork barrel politics.

DOES having to buy two-for’s, three-for’s and even four-for’s at Orange supermarkets send you around the bend?

When you want something to snack on you only need one packet of biscuits. When you want to crank up the washing machine you only want one packet of soap powder. And when you want a coldie, you only want one carton of beer.

But they’re trying to make you shell out for more.       

And it’s not as if you’re saving much because many of the two-for specials at, say, $6 were $3 each the week before.

So it’s just a pea under the thimble trick.

You go to the supermarket to buy what you need.

And that doesn’t include two packets of corn flakes or two tubes of toothpaste when you only need one.

ARE we going back to the future?

In 1865 Britain introduced the Red Flag Act that required all mechanically powered road vehicles not exceed  four m/h (6.4km/h) on the open road and 2m/h (3.2km/h) in towns and be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag to warn the public.

The way things are going, it could come back to that.

Every day Orange road speeds are being reduced for some obscure safety reasons.

The latest is a safe 400 metre straight stretch of Burrendong Way, south of the Northern Distributor, just reduced from 70km/h to 50km/h.

And the Mitchell Highway limit near Chinamans Bend where the distributor joins is being reduced from 100km/h to 80km/h.

In Orange nobody drives at 50km/h anyway and if you do, there’s a tail-gating bullbar in your mirror going much faster.

Pretty soon it’ll be quicker to walk rather than drive a car.

Either that or we’ll go back to the man with the red flag.

READER Brian Coyne found this gem in a June, 1956, Central Western Daily.

“If every car in NSW was put one behind the other in a long line, 90 per cent of the drivers would try to overtake the bloke in front.”

WHAT eggs would you like in your Subway? Caged or free-range?

If it’s free range you’ll no doubt be pleased the ubiquitous restaurant chain is going free-range with the eggs it uses in its build-your-own meals.

Subway dishes up about 5.5 million eggs across its 1400 Australian outlets every year and by going free-range will join Coles, who no longer stocks its home-brand caged eggs, and Woolworths and McDonalds who plan to go the same way.

People believe free-range are more nutritious, healthier and better tasting but the Egg Corporation says they’re no different in any way to eggs from hens kept in cages.

And research by the University of Sydney shows hen stress levels are similar across cage, barn and free range environments with the key factors on hen welfare being hen husbandry and not the system used.

But people seem to be prepared to pay more for eggs they believe were laid by happy hens clucking around in lush paddocks rather than pretty well jammed in cages like sardines, if chooks can be like sardines.

A MAN walks into a bar with a slab of bitumen under his arm.

He says to the bar attendant: “Can I have a beer and one for the road?”