Opinions

This week's Moron Alert
June 18, 2026 in Community and Opinion

Perhaps I should make this a regular weekly feature like Sport and Schools, because it seems that there's no shortage of idiots around Oberon. This week it's someone with almost negative driving skills who decided that the new Sports Complex would be the place to try out driving a 4WD on dirt. There's that old saying about the inability to drive a nail into a piece of balsa, and it certainly applies here. And if the moron is offended that's a good thing.
See the damage and some thoughts about it here

Parents for Climate picnic
June 4, 2026 in Opinion

On Saturday, May 30, Oberon Matters was a guest at a picnic at the delightful 3 Veg Farm in Bathurst. (Yes, a real vegetable farm right among the houses in Bathurst!) It was organised by the Bathurst branch of Parents for Climate to raise awareness of the need to fight back against the flood of dis- and misinformation coming from the opponents to renewable energy projects in the region. There were lots of people there with their kids (who will inherit whatever Earth we old folk leave behind) and the  gathering was around an open fire heating up soup for lunch and boiling water for tea (and nothing makes tea as nice as water boiled in a billycan). Councillor Elaine West from Bathurst Regional Council spoke as did Jack Fry, President of the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network. Someone also spoke about the situation in Oberon.

It's too easy to think that the people with the loudest voices are the only ones who should be heard and whose position has much more support than it really has, so it was educational to meet some of the quieter speakers presenting a different point of view.

Checking the facts
April 30, 2026 in Opinion

I was recently pointed to a court case as evidence that a court had ruled on a particular matter with the suggestion that the ruling would apply in totally different circumstances to a totally unrelated matter and a second case where the result was nowhere near as favourable as was being suggested. The assumption was that nobody would read the actual court papers. This reminded me of a piece I wrote for Australasian Science magazine a few years ago about the difficulty of checking all the "facts" in a story.
You can read the article here

Big problems, simple answers.
April 2, 2026 in Opinion
Updated July 2, 2026

American journalist H L Menken is often quoted as saying "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong". This has been amply exhibited by two events affecting this part of the world right now - the closure of Victoria Pass and the price and availability of fuel following events in Iran.
See the rant here

Words fail me, like a 195 year old bridge
March 12, 2026 in Opinion

We are a quarter of the way into the 21st century and we have discovered that road transport to the western half of the state depends on the integrity of a causeway built by convicts in the 1830s. Mitchell Causeway (the "Convict Bridge") on Victoria Pass has cracks and the road is closed in both directions until ... . Well, until we don't know when. Lets just drive b-doubles through the middle of Lithgow until someone works out what to do.
See a rant about this here

Editorial - Where is our Leagues Club?
January 29, 2026 in Opinion

When the construction of the new sports complex was announced there were two assumptions shared by almost everyone in Oberon. One of these assumptions was that the Leagues Club would move across to the purpose-built facilities in the new grandstand. So where is it?
See the rest of this here

There's a homeless person in town. Shock. Horror.
January 29, 2026 in Opinion and People

The presence of a homeless person in town has produced two sorts of responses.
See more about this here