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From The Daily Advertiser, Wagga Wagga, Thursday, October 22, 1998 Letters to the Editor (p. 4)
SIR,
Will people please stop complaining about the upgrade of the Wagga main street?
The main street of this otherwise fair city must be the ugliest in Australia. If it isn't, I have no wish to see the one that is.
The main street contains some of the worst examples of post-war architectural excrescences in existence. The dreadful cacophony of awnings - of different widths, of different thicknesses, at different heights, each painted in a different garish colour, exuding tawdry advertising above, below and edgeways, make walking down Baylis Street an experience only to be enjoyed by the aesthetically challenged or the visually impaired.
Almost without exception, these ghastly awnings and their accretions serve no useful purpose, offering neither shade in summer nor shelter in winter. The removal of the real verandahs from the hotels, enforced by the city council in the 1940s and 1950s, is something for which we should all curse its memory.
Neither Baylis not Fitzmaurice Street has a coherent streetscape. As an example, the "modern-traditional" horror of the Youth and Community building (or whatever the department is called this week), with its external blue tiling that makes it look like a men's toilet turned inside out has been sensitively placed next to a traditional and inoffensive Aussie pub.
As a result, any upgrade, including the application of precision pattern bombing by the Royal Australian Air Force, would be an improvement.
-- Malcolm Glennie Holmes, Kooringal.
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