Everyone was urged to get on board and get an Opal Card. It was the next best thing to sliced bread.

Now, we read that to “top up” your Opal Card you have to travel to Bathurst, where there are “selected supermarkets, newsagencies and convenience stores”.

Who, in their right mind, would travel to Bathurst to “top up” an Opal Card?

This is an outrageous bureaucratic decision, which has not seen one politician of any political party stand up and say how utterly ridiculous this is.

And this has occurred on the watch of the National Party – the former so-called champions of regional and rural Australia.

True it is that the Transport Minister is a Sydney-based member of the Liberal party.

But the Nationals are a coalition partner of the Liberals.

Someone recently described the modern-day National Party as the lapdog of the Liberals.

Where was Deputy Premier and Nationals’ leader, Troy Grant, when the decision was made for Bathurst to be the centre for Opal Card “top up” in this area of the state? Asleep at the wheel?

How many towns west of Orange must see their citizens travel to Bathurst to “top up” the Opal Card?

A spokesperson for Transport NSW is quoted as saying that “the NSW government is currently considering options for Opal retailers in target areas outside the current footprint”.

What a beautiful bureaucratic term – “the current footprint”. If Lotto can instal machines in even the smallest of towns, surely NSW Transport can do likewise.

IN correcting Charlie Everett's claim that the upgrade to Suma Park Dam was one-in-100-year event, I took the opportunity to inform the Orange community of the historical facts relating to the dam wall safety requirements.

I'm pleased that the upgrade meets the NSW Dam Safety Committee's requirement of one-in-one-million-year event. Up until the completion of the upgrade, I would not have considered living in the immediate downstream area below the wall as the wall met 0.02 per cent of the requirement.

I remember the installation of alarms to the households below the wall. It is council's consultant concerned about further housing development downstream of the Dam and that it should be restricted.

The point Charlie makes about the care and maintenance of the stream below the dam wall does have merit.

I MUST confess to being totally over all this ballyhoo concerning the online census.

It looks like we're doing our level best to become a nation of whingers. The paper form took less time to complete than to make a cuppa.

I subscribe to the view that if you attempt to log on to such a facility when something well less than a modicum of common sense would tell you that an inordinate proportion of the nation is also likely to be doing so, then you're a mug.