My Council In Action

If, seized by some ill advised spirit of discovery, you wander down to the rear of my block and peer over the fence your attention may be drawn to what appears to be a poisonous green stretch of open land.  Considering the development all around you may idly wonder why nobody has yet built a block of flats on it.  The reason is that this isn't land at all, it is a scum and weed covered patch of what, for want of a better term and for the purposes of this blog only, we shall call water.

I recently received a letter from my local council concerning this festering disease sump although I believe they described it as "a priority biodiversity site for the Inner West".  Well I guess mosquitoes do have to breed somewhere.  Apparently it provides a refuge for aquatic plants and animals.  There's an entire rivers worth of polluted filth oozing its way to the sea a couple of hundred metres away but I guess that's too far for the aquatic plants and animals to walk.

The reason for the council's missive was a semi disaster that happened some months ago.  Heavy rains undermined the banks of this noisome plague pit and for a while there it looked like some of my neighbours might have the interesting experience of watching their homes slide beneath the murky filth.  That happened in February last year and now, a mere sixteen months later, council is preparing to spring into action, in a year or so, to prevent such an undesirable state of affairs.  Council being council they couldn't leave it at that.  No, invitations will be solicited from the surrounding community on the future management of Dibble Street Water Hole, a name which I can only assume is used because "Slimy, disease infested cesspit" doesn't look good on google maps.  And not only the water hole!  Taking the bit between its teeth the council has decided to invite comment on the future management of the nearby Marrickville Golf Course.

I wasn't aware of this but apparently the golf course is irrigated with "water" from the water hole.  This does however explain why the principal hazard isn't the bunker at the seventeenth but rather mutated, tentacled horrors lurching across the greens in search of flesh.  I could point out that the golf course is even closer to the previously mentioned river than the water hole but in fairness you could probably bottle and sell the contents of the water hole with less damage to the local health than using the Cooks River to irrigate anything.  Probably the only thing you could use the Cooks River for is cleaning out your drains.

So it would appear that, starting sometime in 2019 hordes of council hired workers will descend on the water hole to shore up its crumbling banks with plaster of paris or some such.  The council warns that there will be no access to the water hole while said remediation works are in progress.  No explanation is given as to why the hell anyone might desire such access.  The only use I can think of for the water hole is if I wanted to dispose of a dead body.  That probably wouldn't be a problem, it would provide much needed sustenance for the aquatic plants and animals which I am assured are currently unfortunate enough to make the water hole their home.