Yeah, poor kid!

Forced to travel to Sanctuary Point instead of Lake Burley Griffin. What a tough life. What with the regular seabreezes on LBG and all.

How does he get his push bike all that way by himself with his boards and sails? That must be one tough kid.

Gosh, the poor little fella!

My heart goes out to Alex and his family at this difficult time..

We normally keep sailing in the lake too despite the frequent closures over the last few years due to blue-green algae because we figure that we are probably immune to it, are on top of the water much of the time and that the middle of the lake is much better than the edge

BUT...

This year the bacterial counts were 33 times the upper limit in places arising from flooding and sewage discharge incidents upstream at Queanbeyan.

Also, Yarralumla Bay was inaccessible and that's where we launch. First the bay was full of logs and then they pulled them all out onto the beach. They stayed there for 3 months until they chipped them last week. Maybe they'll open the car park once the wood chip mountains have been removed. We're hoping it shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks - just in time for winter...


This is a photo of the beach. That was bad enough but it got ten times worse because they then dragged all the logs from the rest of the lake to the beach too!!

I miss LBG, even though I've moved to Gerroa I still miss the gusty Nor'westers, the solid Easterlies and the blue green algae.....

....At least next summer you guys can crash at my place and get some serious training in at Gerroa, we'll see if the boy can take out the wave sailing next.

Anyways good luck Alex, see you guys when you get back home.

Jase.

The Canberra Times page 2 article on Alex and his "plight" needed to be read in political context.

The front page carried an article that started with "The National Capital Authority cannot afford to manage Lake Burley Griffin and the ACT Government should take control of the national icon, according to the Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope". And further, "Mr. Stanhope was reacting to revelations that . . . sewage-related bacteria in Lake Burley Griffin rose to 60 times the safe level for human exposure after a spill from the Queanbeyan Sewerage Treatment Plant last year".

Queanbeyan is in NSW, and the Canberra Times / ACT government is, in part, using Alex in making a case for better Federal and/or NSW funding. Have you heard anything like that before? Mining taxes? GST revenue sharing between states? Complaints from Adelaide re NSW and Victoria's treatment of the Murray? Hmmm.... I bet that sounds familiar to you.

Alex's article is quite a compliment to our sport; windsurfing has that eco-friendly, clean, green image. (Not talking about algae here).

Good luck, and good winds for your endeavours, Alex!

Poor Alex.......life is so ruff.