IT’S an age-old story. The battle of beauty versus the need to move with the times.
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Not many people found the byproducts of the Industrial Revolution particularly attractive – factories spewing waste into water bodies, smog blighting the heavens, ancient buildings tarred and blackened.
We’re now in the Technological Revolution, which brings with it cables, towers and conductors of all types – a lesser evil perhaps but certainly still removed from the Utopian paradise many of us think of when we think of the words “natural beauty”.
Nevertheless, technology is a major part of the world we inhabit. Visiting Glenlyon, a vast majority of visitors would surely be frustrated by the fact they can’t make a mobile phone call, send a text message, or access the web.
The lack of signal in the township is impractical at best, and dangerous at worst. This is particularly the case in bushfire season or in other types of emergencies.
Tom Perfect however does have a point. Could a 35 metre phone tower in Glenlyon forever mar the town’s beauty? That would be a terrible shame, but also potentially an economic disaster in a township that needs its picture-perfect postcard image to attract tourists.
Mr Perfect identified that a mobile phone tower was necessary, but he implored Telstra and Hepburn Shire Council to find a better location. He, along with other residents, said the tower could be better situated in a less visually-offensive position.
However, practicality won over. The alternative site was not considered suitable in order to properly ameliorate Glenlyon’s mobile phone coverage problems.
Telstra and the council combed through objections including visual impact, safety concerns and fears about electro-magnetic radiation, all of which they claimed to counter.
Regarding visual impact, the council said there was no requirement that the structure be invisible, only that it did not unduly dominate views.
Still, in a world where natural beauty of every kind seems to be getting progressively eroded at the rate of knots, what hope do we have?
Holocombe ward councillor Bill McClenaghan said after a while, no-one would even notice the tower. Let’s hope he’s right.
Let’s hope Glenlyon’s mobile phone tower seamlessly blends in with its surrounds and that locals like Mr Perfect do not lose their patch of paradise.