# THE REDGUM HOLLOW GAZETTE ### Edition 19 — Week of Monday 8 June to Sunday 14 June 2026 **Est. 1887 by a person with opinions and access to a printing press.** *Your Community. Your News. Our Best Guess.* *Winter proper now. Frost on the ute bonnets Tuesday through Friday. No rain. The sky doing that thing where it looks like it's thinking about it, then decides against.* --- ## BENCH FIXED. TOWN SOFTENS SLIGHTLY ON BRUCE PATTERSON. The bench outside the General Store has new timber in it. Pale against the old grey — you'll see it if you look, and this week everyone is looking. Bruce Patterson arrived Thursday morning at seven-thirty with a socket set and his own timber, completed the job, and was gone before Lorraine unlocked the front door. He did not wait to be thanked. He did not wait to be told to. He apparently did not wait at all. Clarrie Burton sat on it by nine and it held, which in this district functions as an official load-bearing certification. The Macca-Bruce trailer feud of 1998 has been recalled by no fewer than four people in the context of contrasting it favourably with this. Whether Bruce is aware he is currently the town's example of quiet decency is unknown. My feeling is he'd find the whole conversation embarrassing, which is probably why he finished before anyone was awake to have it. *'He did the right thing'* is the formulation making its rounds. It is being said, I note, with mild surprise. That surprise is worth examining, Redgum Hollow. But that is next week's editorial. --- ## RAY CONNELLY PUTS HIS ADDRESS ON AN ENVELOPE: TOWN READS IMPLICATIONS Ray Connelly's Wednesday outgoing mail now carries a return address. Henderson place. His name on it. Lorraine Apps noted this without comment. Her not-commenting has since been observed by three people who watch Lorraine the way some people watch the sky — for what it signals rather than what it says. What does it mean? It means he's planning to receive replies. It means Henderson is somewhere he expects to still be when replies arrive. It means — and this is my editorial conjecture, offered with full confidence — that Ray Connelly is not a man who is passing through. This paper has previously reported the Whitmore & Associates parcels, the bore testing correspondence with Shelley at Landcare, the cash purchase. A man who pays cash, writes to Landcare about bore capacity, and then begins putting his address on return mail is a man who is calculating something with a longer horizon than the season. Deb Forsythe's planning committee has, separately, extended the festival stall map toward the eastern boundary. She is, by all accounts, assuming Ray's land is in play. Whether she has asked him is a question this paper puts to the planning committee directly, and will continue to put until someone answers it. --- ## ROYAL AND BINGO CORNER: MACCA FINDS SOMETHING Seventy-two through the door at the Royal on Saturday. Fourteen-point win over Gillenbah. Helen Watts at the bingo corner for the first time in any regular's living memory, and her drink already waiting before she sat down. Nobody is explaining how Macca knew. Nobody is asking either. The bingo corner at five on a Friday is now a social institution. That is not a small thing. That is, in fact, exactly the kind of small thing that keeps a pub viable when the quarters get difficult. This paper is saying no more than that. --- ## LETTERS TO THE EDITOR **On the subject of the bench:** *Dear Marge — I'll say what others won't. Bruce Patterson fixed that bench because it was the right thing, full stop. I sat on it Thursday morning and it's solid. Some of us don't need applause. Some of us just get on with it. — C. Burton* **On the subject of the clinic queue:** *Marge — I don't know who's talking but if the queue at Dr Sharma's is long it's because people are finally going. That's not a bad sign. That's what a good doctor does. — Name withheld, Redgum Hollow* **On the subject of Tash's bread:** *It was twelve loaves on Friday. I counted. I'm not saying anything, I'm just noting it. — L.A.* *(Ed. — Lorraine, I know it was you. I also counted.)* --- ## AROUND THE DISTRICT — Frost Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. No rain. The creek is down. — Steve-o was at Tash's café Saturday afternoon past usual closing. The two customers finishing their coffees are to be commended for their discretion and their very slow coffees. — Fuel up again at the servo. No comment available. None sought. — The footy win over Gillenbah was fourteen points. Currawong Flats are watching. — The child's shoe on the Henderson fence remains in place. Some landmarks are more useful than maps. *— Marge Holloway, Editor, Proprietor, and Woman Who Is Thinking Very Hard About Ray Connelly's Return Address.*