Mayor DalBroi’s comment insults the intelligence of his listeners, particularly Yenda residents.

At a total project cost of $1.2 million the 1:50 ARI replacement flood gates cost is equally shared between Federal Government, NSW State Government and Griffith City Council share is $400k.

To tell Yenda residents that a 1:100 flood gate system costing $2.4m between three Governments with Griffith City Council share doubling to $800k is too expensive after the Yenda Community, both businesses and private residents suffered losses in the order of $90m is flabbergasting to say the least. 

If council’s share doubles and an extra $400k is too expensive to securely protect a 1000 people impacted by the 2012 Yenda Flood then how can a skatepark cost of $600k benefitting 20 users be justified Mr Mayor notwithstanding, it was a Federal Government grant.  

Seventy-five years ago, the Thai–Burma railway was completed on 16 October 1943, costing the lives of more than 2,800 Australian Prisoners of War (POWs), including some 700 at Hellfire Pass.

During the Second World War, the Japanese sought to maintain their armies in Burma and began construction of a 420 km railway between western Thailand and Burma through harsh jungles and mountains.

Construction of the Thai–Burma railway began in October 1942 and by the time the line was finished, around 270,000 Asian labourers and some 60,000 Allied POWs, including Australian, British, Dutch, and American troops had worked on its construction.

The most notorious site along the railway is Hellfire Pass, where prisoners were required to drill, blast and dig their way through solid limestone and quartz rock. Shifts lasted up to 18 hours a day during the most intense period, a regimen that continued for some six weeks. The Pass was named both for the brutal working conditions and the eerie light thrown by bamboo fires as skeletal figures laboured by night, reminiscent to some of Dante’s Inferno.

Private James ‘Snow’ Peat found strength in these difficult conditions by thinking of home, and those waiting for him, I had a wife and little girl. And the will to live. I said ‘I’m not dying in this bloody place, and that’s all there is to it.’

This attitude, and the resilience and determination shown by Australian POWs during the Second World War epitomises the Anzac spirit forged more than two decades earlier during the First World War.

Today, we remember the some 75,000 Asian labourers who died alongside the Allied prisoners while working on the railway and we honour the service and sacrifice of the some 12,500 Allied POWs who died, including more than 2,800 Australians.

Lest we forget.

I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to Cathy and her family, who as a nurse gave my elderly grandmother Betty first aid after a bad fall in Lockhart outside the water tower. Thanks to Cathy as well as being a nurse who helped us to make my grandmother comfortable while we waited for the ambulance for over an hour. Thank you for your kindness from the Schubert family.