Kesh, Julie-Anne, Tayla, Leah and Graham, The Browning Project.

I have just studied an aerial photo of our beloved rail precinct, looking south from where the new block of flats may be. I see so much of heritage interest from right to left; the old coach house at the gate, signal box, last set of operational gates over endangered broad gauge lines, Provincial Hotel, Reid's Coffee Palace and entire Lydiard Street. Line up towers on town hall, Craig's Hotel, post office and railway station, and our civic hall, thankfully saved from a catastrophe. On skyline, Mt Pleasant and Golden Point whose gold fed these monuments we inherited, old Camp Street Courthouse c. 1939 with mixed memories, signal gantry, sympathetic retro bus shelter, culminating in the most magnificent train hall in Australia, adjoining renovated, appealing north-facing offices.

Mark Twain said Maryborough is a railway station with a town attached. We don't want a block of flats with a station attached. They could at least wait until I am permanently up the other end of Lydiard Street. This land will be priceless to our following generations, who may read our SOS letters in The Courier archives and say, "Tut tut". Suffer offspring suffer. It is as retrograde as the removal of our trams. At least we got PTV buses as a substitute. Despite this, their ideal presence on PTV rail land has been somewhat scorned by themselves. Alas, the trade off from the flats is nil. PTV: Political Travesty Visionless. It's not demolition by neglect. It is demolition of heritage by construction.

Colin Holmes, Ballarat

The Courier website recently revealed that the Council is considering leasing an area in Creswick Road as a parking area, to make up for those lost to the controversial GovHub development beside the Civic Hall. Alternatively, why couldn't the State government acquire the Creswick Road property as the site for the GovHub leaving the Civic Hall site available to be developed as a Civic Square with parking underneat, similar to that beneath the main lawn area at Melbourne Uni.] This parking would be much more convenient for both short term shoppers, city workers and library patrons while the re-sited GovHub could have its own parking. As a bonus, it would no longer be 'necessary' to demolish the Lower Hall on the Civic Hall site.

 Stuart Kelly, Ballarat

So the council is now looking at options for car parking as the Govhub kicks off. Maybe they can tear up all the landscaping they ordered around the civic hall and reinstate as car parks when the rest of the car parks on the site are unusable. Seriously, I struggle to think of any development in all of Australia as bungled as this. Let's turn all the space currently used as car parks into a park before starting the development. Now the site will have no accessible parking as the whole site will soon be cordoned off, and alternate land will have to be sourced to provide parking for the library at additional cost. When you build a house the landscaping is the last thing completed, however this council has dudded itself and the public out of even more money for the neverending Civic Hall money pit.

Joel Menner, Ballarat