Hi,

best wishes to all of you for 2023. Hopefully it will be a better year than the last one.

Having said that, we really just had one bad DAY last year! February 28th. The rest of the year demonstrated the resilience of our town, and showed a positive spirit (by lots of folk) to re-build, re-invent, and renew. Walk around the city block today and there are more businesses re-opened than not, and even more than a few new ones!

A lot more residential properties seem to be occupied as well. I suspect that most of those are owner-occupied rather than rentals. Just like the businesses - if you have true personal connections to a place (whether financial, emotional, or both) you simply have to defend it. And re-invest.

2022 was so broken and disrupted that it's only really been in the last month or so that I've had a fully operational workspace and been able to get back into top gear.

I have quite a big backlog of major repairs to catch up on, as well as a few dozen minor ones, so I will have to close my shop for a few weeks to catch up.

The nature of my gig means that I usually have to pull the shutters down for one or two weeks each year (to catch up!), but the chaos that was 2022 means that this time I have to do it for a few weeks.

My shop will re-open late January and hopefully things will be back to "normal" after that.

Best wishes to everyone, and I look forward to seeing you in 2023.

Andrew

 

Hi there my friends,

and so goes another year. And what a year it was!

Thanks to the support of all of you who have needed my time and skills to make your instruments work properly, in the wake of the flood the shop has slowly crept its way back towards normal.

Thanks also to all of you who have asked about Lisa, and expressed concern about her illness. She is still recovering, albeit very slowly. We are hoping that her recovery will continue, and hopefully at an increased rate.

The next post on this page will be about guitars, repairs, and the big backlog I have that I will be addressing in the first three or four weeks of 2023. 

But meanwhile...

If you walk around the Lismore CBD now you'll see that about 70% (and perhaps even more) of the businesses have re-opened. And there are even several new businesses!

One of the important ones for us is that Planet Music has been sold, dismantled , and reconstructed at 81 Keen Street Lismore. With a new owner! 

The new owner is Matt Bone, former employee of both Planet Music and Byron Music, a genuine working musician (bass player), and I'm sure that many of you will know him.

I can't think of a better person than Matt to take over Planet Music. He is well-known and well-regarded, knows the music retail industry from both sides (all sides!), and is a thoroughly splendid chap!

In uncertain times, this is the best news for Lismore's music scene that I can imagine.

The February 2022 flood was a genuine disaster. And a huge test of personal philosophy - "do you believe that the glass is half-full or half-empty"!

The recovery from such an enormous event was always going to take a while, but the level of commitment shown by every single business owner, and every single home owner, to clean up and move back-in shows that there are plenty of those of us that are optimists.

And every one of us has a newly-modified plan should an event even a fraction of that one happen again.

Shame that the authorities don't seem to have one. Divert Leycester Creek, dredge the Wilsons River, have some upstream plan in order, and complete the Richmond River Overflow outlets to the ocean between Woodburn and Wardell.

All of which plans have had technical approval and even government budgeting, but none of which have been enacted due to "cost".

The cost to people who lost absolutely everything, and also those who didn't but whose lives were still irrevocably changed, is immeasurable in the real world. 

Meanwhile, sports stadiums and nuclear submarines are regarded as money wisely spent...

Oh NO!! I've gone political again! I spent my whole life trying to avoid this stuff, and within a few strikes of the keyboard I've joined the damn system!

In too deep now, trying to scramble my way out...

2023 will be about nothing but guitars. Promise!

Andrew