Week of Monday 14 September to Sunday 20 September 2026 — Edition 33
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DRAIN MOVES FROM SESSION TO SOIL: DEB FORSYTHE, TREVOR NANCE, AND A MORNING ON PATTEN ROAD

The south depression drain graduated this week from diagram to boots. Trevor Nance's ute was at the Henderson place Friday morning. Deb Forsythe's ute was also there. A person driving the Patten Road reports three figures at the south fence — Trevor Nance, Deb Forsythe, and, it is understood, Ray Connelly.

This is progress of the most legible kind. The drain was tabled at Tuesday's session with a diagram, a discharge point, a quote, and three names: Bruce Patterson, Clarrie Burton, Ray Connelly. Bruce's endorsement — PVC'll hold if the discharge is clear — is now a matter of public record, entered in the ledger by Gary "Macca" McKenzie, which in this district carries a weight somewhere between minutes and scripture.

Deb rang Trevor Nance later in the week. Trevor Nance is a plumber. These facts do not require assembly.

Whether Ray's quote is the one being contracted, or whether Trevor Nance is the mechanism by which Deb checks it, is not confirmed. The Gazette notes only that Deb Forsythe brought a diagram to a session, and within four days was standing at the south fence in spring boots. On a timeline that normally runs at the speed of planning, this is remarkable. On Deb's timeline, it is Tuesday.

RAY CONNELLY AND CLARRIE BURTON: SIX MINUTES, NO TRANSACTION, EVERYTHING ELSE

Thursday morning, outside the store. Ray Connelly leaning. Clarrie Burton sitting. Six minutes by one estimate, no visible exchange of goods or money.

One person passed. Their report: they didn't say much. The editorial addition circulating since: they didn't need to.

This is the third point of contact between these two men the Gazette has been able to document — after the forty-five minutes with Des Hartley in Edition 26, and Clarrie's name appearing on the drain proposal in Tuesday's session. What is being assembled, from the outside, is a picture of a newcomer who arrived without obvious allies and has, without any apparent campaign, acquired the kind of quiet company that takes other men decades.

The Gazette will not name what this means. But Clarrie Burton does not sit for six minutes with people he finds uninteresting, and in thirty years of watching Clarrie Burton, this newspaper has found no exceptions to that observation.

Ray did not attend Saturday's match. He was working on his own place, by general assumption. Nobody specifies further. Nobody seems to feel they need to.

FOOTY: THREE FROM THE CORRIDOR, HOME WIN, AND THE CAUTION BEING APPLIED QUIETLY

Redgum Hollow 13.7 defeated Goodnight Creek 8.4 on Saturday. Steve "Steve-o" Mitchell kicked three from the corridor. Keith said that's it twice, which those present took as the closest Keith comes to a standing ovation.

The caveat making the rounds since — spoken carefully, usually after a pause — is that three against Goodnight Creek is not the same as three against Currawong Flats. Correct. Noted. Filed. We are nonetheless printing the three goals because this newspaper records what happens, and Steve-o Mitchell kicking three from the corridor is what happened.

Sixty-four through the Royal Saturday night. Better than Currawong week. Macca underlined the figure in the ledger. What this means is not confirmed; that it means something is not in question.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

On the matter of the Dooley edition:
Marge, I bought a copy before eight-thirty. I'll own that. I don't know what I expected to feel and I don't know that I'll say it here. But you put it straight and somebody had to. — B. Patterson, Henderson Road

From the south end of town:
Mrs Holloway — the drain is real, the quote is fair, and the discharge point is correct. That's all I'll say in a letter. — Name supplied

On the bench:
Saw Clarrie on the bench Wednesday with the paper. Didn't wave. Felt it would've been wrong to. — Unsigned, town end

AROUND THE DISTRICT

Spring arrived Tuesday in the technical sense. The paddocks have not yet been informed.

Lorraine Apps recorded fifteen rolls gone before ten-twenty Monday and made a notation described as a vertical line. The system is evolving faster than observers can classify it. Lorraine has not explained. Lorraine will not explain.

The Bicentenary planning continues. The fourteenth of August is a date with its own momentum now, and Deb Forsythe is the reason.

No rain. Not even the suggestion.