While we shop we’d be able to park our cars in one of many two or three-storey parking stations in every city block.

We’d have a community of fully-serviced residential units and a thriving commercial area.

Big trucks in Summer Street would be gone because a ring road would circle the city, taking all the heavy and industrial traffic away from the central business district. Anson Street would be a pedestrian mall.

There’d be a whole centre of new industry based in the eastern and northern boundaries, boosting the city’s economy by millions of dollars and providing a boom in jobs.

An inter-city rapid transit rail line was planned between Orange and Bathurst via the new city at Vittoria, while the relocation of part of the existing main line north of the railway station was being looked at to avoid cutting us in two.

Council planner at the time Max Boudan agreed with the corporation’s plans but emphasised the ring road was the city’s most important project, predicting it would be built and open by 1990.

Well, 26 years later we are one of the great inland cities but there’s no inter-city rapid transit, the railway line still divides Orange, there’s no two or three-storey parking stations and the ring road, distributor or feeder road, or whatever you want to call it, still isn’t finished.

 And it’s unlikely it will ever be finished as originally planned because there’s no way to get from the Forbes Road across to the south other than Ploughmans Lane, which residents would bitterly oppose.

 It would have to be widened and a strip of Wentworth golf course could also go so it will probably become a ‘feeder’ road.

Or, if you like, a rose by any other name ...

HAVE the cops taken the patrol out of highway patrol?

Apparently policy is to be stationary for a big part of their shift so police are sitting on the side of the road in their tricked-up $100,000 cars rather than mixing with traffic, being seen and keeping speeding drivers under control.

But if they have to park on the side of roads, the government could save money by giving them Mazda 2s or Toyota Yarises because they wouldn’t need the expensive performance cars they’ve got now.  

Have a look next time you’re going somewhere and any highway patrol car you see will more than likely be parked under a tree, in a gateway or in the middle of divided roads.

That’s not saving lives.

It’s no different to those mobile things they park in Orange, in streets like Woodward Street, simply collecting money on safe stretches of road where’s there’s no accidents.

CAN people remember an overhead bridge put up by the Redex oil company in late 1954 across Forest Road, the main straight for the old Gnoo Blas motor racing circuit, to join two spectator areas?

 The bridge came from Glen Davis where it was part of a petrol cracking retort, built in 1936 to produce an alternative supply of fuel should another war break out in Europe.

But in 1951 when petrol was costing 60 cents a gallon to produce compared with 20 cents for imported fuel, the federal government decided to cut its heavy losses.

It closed Glen Davis in 1952 and sold most of the land and equipment while the 2500 residents packed up and left, turning Glen Davis into a ghost town.

When racing finished at Gnoo Blas in 1961, the bridge was dismantled and a section of it was moved into Orange and rebuilt over the creek adjacent to the netball courts in Moulder Park.

It’s still there but maybe it should be returned to the old track as some sort of memorial.

WITH the present controversy over a dam at the Needles between Canowindra and Mandurama, first proposed at least 45 years ago but dumped by then deputy premier and Orange MP Charlie Cutler in favour of building Carcoar, it’s interesting another dam proposed at Cudal in the 1980s didn’t get a guernsey either.

It caused a barney between Sir Charles’ successor Garry West and enthusiastic Cudal dam campaigner Tom Rands, who reckoned the dam was planned by the Liberal-Country Party government, then scrapped by the Wran government but promised again by the National Party when in opposition.

But the Nats in government gave the dam the boot and so Tom launched his own campaign, getting letters of support from Orange, Cabonne, Parkes, Forbes and Cowra councils and collecting 2000 signatures on a petition.

He also bought a small van, covered it in signs, rigged it with loud speakers and drove thousands of kilometres to spread the message.

He also stood for Parliament but didn’t make it and that was the end of the Cudal dam. 

A GRASSHOPPER hops into a bar and orders a beer.

“You’re quite a celebrity around here,” says the barman. “We’ve even got a drink named after you.”

“What,” says the grasshopper. “You’ve got a drink named Fred?”