Letter to the editor: Australia Day
Simon Black’s well-written, mature opinion piece about Rory Miles, Rushcutters Bay Park tennis club manager, deserves commendation (“Rory miles – The Morton Bay Fig: Opinion”, City News, January 6).
His partner, Yoon Kim, was also a silent partner. Together, for over 27 years, they knitted a community together based on their love of service, love of community and love of tennis.
Their efforts went well beyond what was required or expected. They created life-long social networks and an outreach programme which formed a social glue, binding underprivileged children from Woolloomooloo, Rory’s own childhood suburb, with the eastern suburb’s upper-crust. Rory provided all their equipment and coaching for free out of his own pocket.
These children became Rory’s and Yoon’s wider ‘tennis family’.
And it created a continuum: many families are third-generation tennis club players. They are also deeply disappointed a planning imbroglio over Clover Moore’s vision for this heritage-listed park and unnecessary loss of the historic 1948 caretaker’s cottage have created such devastating social consequences.
Their loss is our loss.
After all, a city is its people, not a knot of planners looking to fulfil a design aesthete.
And as we approach Australia Day it’s well-worth remembering that Rory and Yoon are the quintessential quiet Australians whose 27-year contribution should have also been a cause for celebration, not degradation.
Dixie Coulton,
Friends of Rushcutters Bay Park
