Re: [NSW] Dorrigo (was: 6042 in south australia?)

["Trevor Edmonds" <tedmonds@tmx.com.au>]

Rod Gayford wrote...

<<A lot of well meaning people have been played for suckers and still are
being played for suckers.>>

I think it is up to us to to determine if we are suckers.

<<The outfit even has its true believers who are mouth pieces for a certain
gentleman. How come he never has anything to say?>>

There is a newsletter that comes out monthly with 6 to 8 pages of whats
happening. Even that is hard put to keep up with events.

<<The assertion that Dorrigo has been inspected by ASC, ATO etc and came up
squeaky clean is clearly not sustainable as those government regulatory
bodies chose to take no further action since in most cases the complaints
about Dorrigo are really of a civil nature and not within their
jurisdiction. You cannot say that all is squeaky clean just because a
complaint is NFA'd.>>

By saying that most complaints were civil, you seem to suggest that some of
them were not. The point I was making was that those complaints have been
shown to have no basis, so why should any of the other malicous rumours have
any more credibility? There has never been any civil finding against DSRM
either.

<<The Dorrigo fiasco could have been solved years ago if it wasn't for the
intransigence of one particular person who expected State Rail to hand over
public property to a private individual who happened to possess a lot of
rolling stock that may or may not have belonged to him.>>

There was never any expectation that the line would be given to any
individual. The preferred option from DSRM was to purchase the line. The
lease (which was subsequently cancelled by legislation) was a fall back.
DSRM is now getting the top half of the line for $1 only because we have
agreed to drop the legal proceedings for the cancellation of the lease.

BTW, the claim that an individual (I take it you are referring to Keith
Jones) owns all the rolling stock has been taken out of context. The
position taken by DSRM is that Keith has custody the rolling stock as
trustee for the (then) unincorporated DSRM. Ownership of the rolling stock
will be placed in a charitable trust when we get around to it. Its not a
high priority at the moment.

<<The fact of the matter  is that the top part of the rail line is probably
damaged beyond repair.>>

That leaves us with a bigger repair job than would have been the case if
State Rail had not arbitarily banned operation on the line 12 years ago.

<<So what does that leave, a pile of junk that is going to attract bugger
all in the way of tourists.>>

We are only 5lm away from the rainforest Centre which has audited visitor
figures of 170,000 per year. All the coach companies running tours to the
rainforest are keen to include DSRM in their itineries. Many already drive
around the station site. This was all concidered before the original
decision to move to Dorrigo was made.

<<The stuff was deliberately carted up their, and still is, so that it would
be very difficult to evict them from the property.>>

Have a close look at the legislation. The pollies idea was to confiscate the
rolling stock.

<<In other words a war of attrition has been won by Dorrigo. The Transport
Minister should have stuck to his original plan to evict Dorrigo from the
site.>>

The Minister did not want to end up with egg all over his face from the
damages claim.

<<I do not believe the battle is over because the government will soon get
pissed off if the top part of the line is not made operational within a
reasonable time.  The line could still end up sold to the farmers along the
line.>>

That would be an interesting exercise, given that we have exchanged
contracts for the purchase of the line. After what happened last time, I
can't see the pollies trying to legislate us out of existence again.

<<There is is no actual answer to the problem whilst the present management
remain. I am surprised that, as part of the lease of the line, the existing
management were not replaced>>

Its not a lease we are purchasing the line. Given that there has been no
proven case of any maladministration by the current board of directors, and
they have the full support of the membership (the ones putting their time
and money into DSRM) why should they be replaced?

Trevor