This little piggy...

So I saw something today that made me smile. Two girls walking the family pet - a small black pig. Restrained in his/her little harness he/she was quite content to go for a walk and smell the flowers and the grass and the newly sown topsoil in next door's new garden bed. The size of a medium dog the little piggy trotted around Artarmon with the air of a pure bred afghan, not seeming one bit out of place in this Northern Sydney suburb. I hope I see it again soon...!

NBN Co.

We recently had our first experience dealing with council planning applications. NBN Co wanted to put up a 45m tower just off our road opposite our neighbours' place. Suffice to say the residents in the vicinity were not happy and we all put in council submissions to have the application in its current form, refused. Happy to say that the system worked and NBN Co are working out another option.

Still not sure how the council would have gone though - NBN withdrew the application after receiving so many complaints from residents about the current proposal.

Similar tower to NBN proposal

I don't believe anybody is against the need for the tower and this is not a NIMBY issue. I'm happy for the tower to be build just not so close to the road. The proposal had the 45m tower in 25m from our pretty little country road. I've heard that they are looking at moving it further down into the block which should be fine.

The NBN will be of huge value to the area opening up lots of opportunities for business, health and education. Only the towns will be on fibre though. Most of the region will be high-speed wireless- hence the requirement for additional towers. Definitely no fibre coming up our street! But we are on top of a hill with line of site to Mt Wellington, so will have no problem getting a strong signal.

What an exciting piece of national infrastructure - particularly for regional Australia.