Proud to be Australian

Gosford Council and its environmental officers are to be congratulated on the events last week which celebrated the Coastal Open Space System (COSS).

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend some of the functions and was impressed by the organisation of the events and the enthusiasm of the speakers.

I found it both enlightening and inspirational, and above all, an enjoyable experience to meet with very pleasant and interesting people.

We are so very lucky that people in the 1980s had the vision and foresight to try to preserve some of the natural beauty of the Gosford area, such as Rumbalara, Katandra and Kincumber Mountain.

That vision has been preserved and enlarged as it were by many people working hard behind the scenes until today we have over 3000 hectares of bushland in the COSS System.

It is this surely which makes this area a unique place to live.

I believe it would be wonderful if this vision could be extended so that people entering the Gosford area would immediately know that they had entered a very special place, not just because of the number of bushy reserves and ridges which they see, but by the vegetation they experience along the roadsides and around all municipal buildings.

Surely we could celebrate the wonder of our many native plants, some of them threatened or endangered, by exhibiting them in public places instead of plants from the northern hemisphere.

Plants such as azaleas and petunias are beautiful in their own way, but they are not Australian and they need much water.

Exhibiting our own native plants would encourage people to use them in their gardens and show how it could be done.

It would also show that we are proud Australians in fact as well as sentiment.

Margaret Lund, Woy Woy Bay