For those that didn’t see the story [head to our website] Jubilee Oval in Mudgee’s west has been the location chosen.

Jubilee as any locals would know is where a large amount of weekend sports are played and is home to the Mudgee Wombats clubhouse.

What was most interesting however was when we posted the story to the Mudgee Guardian and Community Group Facebook pages was the amount of comments there were in opposition to the choice of location.

Fair enough if it’s a bit out of the way, you might have to travel from the other side of town to find it, but at least it’s closer than the others were which required a round-trip of a few hours to drop off some cans.

While some commenters were of course happy we finally had a place to get some coin for our cans, the majority had an issue with the area for reasons other than its distance from their home.

A lot of the comments alluded to or outright claimed that the Return and Earn station will be subject to vandalism or destruction because it’s located in the west end of Mudgee.

While this may be true, I think any location chosen unless under 24-hour surveillance has the same odds of being targeted as any other and it’s pretty unfair to paint an entire ‘region’ of Mudgee as being ‘more unsafe’ than the next.

Most of the people reading this either live in the ‘west end’ of Mudgee right now or have in the past and would reject the claim it’s going to be ‘trashed’ as one commenter put it.

There is crime, however relatively low, in Mudgee of course including in ‘west end’ but immediately broadly painting the area as a hotbed of crime shows how elitist and prejudiced people can be.

I personally have lived in different parts of the ‘west end’ through the decades and have never once been the victim of crime. But that doesn’t stop the label of ‘festy westy’ being amended to the end of any conversation that’s had about any part of Mudgee west of Douro Street.

​I could be proven completely wrong and find it damaged or otherwise vandalised, in which case I will openly admit that in a future editorial, but let’s at least hope for the best and automatically assume the best of people instead of the worst.