Whyalla is dying

and whether it can be revived is the subject of the intense and anxious discussions by the spin doctors.

The answer of course is that it cannot be revived. More than a billion dollars of taxpayer funds have been poured into life support but the situation deteriorated anyway. 

Most people knew this would happen but there was an election to win so the money went in. A buyer was found. How the buyer ever believed what the government told him remains, and will remain, a mystery.

As a child at school I was taught that Whyalla was an important part of the state's economy. There were ship works there and the steel works were there. The ships went long ago. The steel works limped along like an old man who thinks he should keep walking but has difficulty in doing so. 

Now the furnace has failed. It was failing for some time but the government's "clean green energy" strategy was, apparently, going to save it. There would be a cheap and ever renewable source of power for it. This was going to save everything - except that it did  nothing of the sort. 

I think we all knew this, those in power certainly did. But, being in power is more important than making the right decisions. You make popular decisions instead. They often involved golf courses and motor-cycle races around the city. They are intended to provide opportunities to open hospitals which are too small or "expressways" to hide the lack of public transport planning.

Whyalla was one of those stages on the long journey to and from the remote location we lived in. It was where the sealed road started and ended. It rose dramatically out of the skyline as you crested the last low rise on the journey to the city. You could see the cranes rising into the deep blue of the summer sky and they grew clearer and larger as the car travelled towards them. 

We would stop in Whyalla. There was a place which sold milk shakes and we children would get out of the car and "just stand there" while Mum made sure we were clean enough and tidy enough to enter the shop. Once in she would have us sit at one of the two Formica topped tables and we would be allowed to have milkshakes before continuing on the long journey via the caravan park and "the facilities". We would go through Port Augusta and Port Pirie and onwards towards Clare but none of them seemed quite the same as Whyalla and the milk shakes. 

Whyalla was growing back then. There were schools the Senior Cat could have been sent to care for but we never lived in "the iron triangle". They were just places we travelled through. They were also places where people lived and worked. Now they live there but the work has gone.

How long will it take before we accept that the "clean green and renewable" dream is just that?