PLANNING SESSION UPDATE: PRIYA STAYS, BRUCE BRINGS FOOTNOTES, AND A MAP CHANGES HANDS

Tuesday's session ran ninety minutes and concluded without drama, which in Redgum Hollow is its own kind of drama. Dr Priya Sharma was present from the opening minute, a fact no longer worthy of remark, which is itself the remark. She is not a guest anymore. She is part of the table.

Bruce Patterson arrived with a revised summary that included a lead-time footnote. This newspaper will not pretend to know exactly what was in that footnote. What this newspaper will say is that a man who six months ago was known primarily for a broken bench now produces planning documents with footnotes, and that the town should sit with that for a moment.

Deb Forsythe gave him the printed site map section without comment.

She gave him the map. Those four words have been doing work around this district since Saturday that most people never get out of a full sentence.

There were no rolls at the session. First time. Nobody said anything. Deb noting an absence without commenting on it is, it must be acknowledged, characteristic. Whether this represents a cooling between Macca and the planning committee, a simple oversight, or something else entirely is the working theory nobody has yet had the nerve to finish aloud.

RAY CONNELLY: THE SECOND CAIRNS ADDRESS AND WHAT THE HORSE CONFIRMS

On Friday morning Ray Connelly posted a letter. Not to Narrabri Steel — we published that in Edition 26 and stand by it. Not to the Cairns address that has been known to certain parties since approximately Edition 19. A different Cairns address.

Lorraine Apps has said nothing. In a woman who can ordinarily be relied upon to say something about anything, this silence is its own data point, and this newspaper is treating it as such.

By Saturday evening the phrase "a different Cairns address" had completed its full circuit of the district, sourced from someone who observed the envelope in the outgoing tray. The interpretation that has settled — settled being generous, but it's what we have — is that Ray Connelly knows more people in Queensland than anyone previously supposed.

What is not yet public, but this newspaper notes for the record, is that Sunday morning he was seen riding the east boundary on horseback. First time anyone has seen him work that ground on horseback. A man who uses a horse for boundary work is a man who has decided where he stands. That the route corresponds to what Bruce Patterson independently noted as a cleared east gate track is the kind of coincidence that stops being a coincidence by the third time you think about it.

The fourteenth of August is eleven days away. This newspaper does not know what happens on the fourteenth of August. But it has been watching Ray Connelly long enough to believe he does.

MACCA OPENS A LEDGER: THE ROYAL HOTEL ACQUIRES A SECOND BOOK

A regular at the end of the bar watched Gary 'Macca' McKenzie pull a clean ledger from under the counter Saturday night. Macca wrote something at the top, considered it, and put it away.

Two theories are circulating. Festival accounts is the hopeful one. A new menu is the romantic one.

This newspaper has no way of knowing which is correct. What it can report is that a man opens a new book when he has decided something. The Royal has had a difficult stretch by any measure this paper is willing to print. A second ledger is not a rescue. But it is a beginning, and beginnings should be noted.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

From Gary Nolan, western catchment:
Marge, I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just coming in for what I need and going home again. But thank you to whoever keeps leaving the water tank gauge by the co-op door where a man can check it without having to ask. You know who you are.
— G. Nolan

From a Reader Who Prefers Not to Say:
The bench has been fixed for months now and Bruce Patterson still gets a mention every other edition. I'm not complaining. I just think it's funny. He'd think it was funny too, and that's half the reason I'm writing.

From Clarrie Burton:
Des Hartley takes his flat white with one and a half sugars. Tash already knows. I mention it only because precision matters, and Tash has it.
— C. Burton

AROUND THE DISTRICT

Steve-o was corrected once at Thursday training. Keith said nothing more after that, which four witnesses confirm is the highest available praise in that man's vocabulary.

Gary Nolan, western catchment, in town again Thursday. Third visit in recent memory. The sky above his place is unchanged. The sympathy in town is not.

Tash's twelve rolls: gone by half past ten Friday. Faster than the week before. Twelve is not enough. Twelve has not been enough for some time. The ledger she hasn't shown anyone presumably knows this already.

Des Hartley tipped his hat to Clarrie Burton outside Creekside on Saturday. They did not stop. They did not need to.

Steve-o Mitchell was at the pub Thursday. Two beers. Quiet. He gets like that.

The Redgum Hollow Gazette is written, edited, typeset, and distributed by Marge Holloway, who is beginning to wonder about the fourteenth of August herself.