The bushfires in Winmalee were tragic, but they hardly 'smashed' the community. Most people in Katoomba would barely know where Winmalee was, and many Winmaleeans wouldn't go as far as Katoomba for their holidays. Part of the charm of the Blue Mountains (where I live) comes from their being strung out over a very long distance, but that does introduce management and transport issues which other more centralised regions do not have. A theatre in Katoomba is more or less useless to those of us living below Springwood, and the council is right to take this into consideration.

"a strategic review free of local constraints" -- is this code for "chuck large sums of money at us"?

Agree in principle with Jon J!
This seems to becoming habitual J.J?
Perhaps it because you seem to always make sense?

The arts the arts, and theatres full of farts?
And simply oodles of sneezes, wafting about on breezes.
Or rows and rows, of tippy tippy toes.
Excuse me sirs, they purrs and purrs.
Plus hours and hours, of waltzes of flowers.
I'm a poet and didn't know it!
Albeid, one wid a cobbin cod.
Oh by duffy dose ad achid head.
Rhrosty.

This is a "crisis"? A declining community wanting better amenities than its neighbours, in a regional already generously endowed with theatres, at someone else's expense.

Robert the blue mountains are past their use by date.

Once a glittering weekend destination, the area is mostly now a dormitory suburb, or a thoroughfare to somewhere else.

I used to stay occasionally in one of the old pubs in Katoomba, when I was racing at Catalina Park race circuit.

It was a lovely old thing, fading genteelly into history. Like Katoomba it was well past it's best, but you could see what a wonderful place it's mirror lined ballroom would have been in it's day. It almost made me wish I could have experienced that gracious era.

The automobile put paid to the days of crowded trains heading to the mountains for a weekend's fun & mischief, as it did to the requirement for local entertainment. With major venues just a short drive away, local theater is finished, apart from minor amateur productions. Spending public money on venues would be ridiculous.

Neatly summarized, Rhian.

>>A declining community wanting better amenities than its neighbours, in a regional already generously endowed with theatres, at someone else's expense.<<

The process goes like this.

You justify the expenditure of $x,xxx,xxx of public money, on a project that you know will never make any return on capital, on "artistic" grounds (how empty would our lives be without beauty/poetry/art etc.)

You then proceed to lose $xxx,xxx per annum on the project - after all, if it were likely to make a profit, commercial interests would have invested in the first place.

No-one has any accountability for either the amount spent, or the amount lost. After all, the taxpayer has agreed to fund it, so off we go. But at the same time, the budget has never been big enough to attract either worthwhile projects, or talented artists. So the quality has never been higher than ho-hum. And is ho-hum really worth the effort, artistically-speaking? Only in the furthest reaches of luvvie-dom.

So it is finally put to rest. Everyone carries on as if it is a combination of Joseph Goebbels' book burning and the looting of Yuan Ming Yuan, when in fact nothing of any value has disappeared. Because nothing of any value had been created in the first place.

Once upon a time, the arts were in the hands of the people. People - not bureaucrats - built theatres, museums, art galleries, folk clubs, poetry workshops, exhibition spaces, music halls etc. that lived and died on their intrinsic quality. Giving these projects public funding automatically condemns them to a lifetime of pointless mediocrity.