It was good news that Sporties, formerly Narrabri Bowling Club, will reopen for business after being in voluntary administration. As the Administrator noted, the club is a great asset in a growing town and would lend itself to amalgamation with another club.

‘Unprecedented’ is a word commonly used nowadays in the context of COVID-19. But we can’t use it in terms of the NSW-Victoria border closure – the border was last closed in 1919 to try and stop the Spanish Flu pandemic spreading.

“People need to be careful with their choice of words nowadays, and also retrospectively,” a reader says. “The reported resignation of a Boeing executive has been welcomed after he was found to have ‘opposed women in combat 33 years ago’. And Scrabble players’ associations are considering some 228 ‘slur’ words which may have to be disallowed including ‘wrinklies’ which can offend older people. ‘Colonial’ has already been expunged – what about the Queen Victoria building in Sydney, named after the great coloniser?”