The museum could be the information centre also situated on council land, for example the old swimming pool and club house sites just across the road from Junction Place or near the old railway goods shed.

He might enthuse the council which wasn't enthusiastic when former premier Jeff Kennett surported a Wodonga museum in what is now Cafe Grove (the old council chambers) opposite the council offices.

He envisaged the council administering it and it being tourist attraction.

I thank Cr Quilty for his interest and support and hope he'll understand the society's reluctance to appeal to the public for crowdfunding when he realises our guide scout halls were funded and physically constructed by what is now known as crowdfunding.

They were demolished by the council for commercial buildings. The Wodonga Brass Band, also financed and built by volunteers, will be demolished very soon for a roundabout. No replacement or compensation.

We'd hoped a new museum would also house a band room and some military history which is also looking for home.

The council could consider crowd funding for the Bonegilla Migrant Experience too instead of spending multi-millions of ratepayers’ money on a facility that, while worthy of museum status, is kilometres out of town and depicts only the specific post-World War II history of that area. Those migrants were the second wave of migrants, the first in 1854 settled Wodonga and the Riverina and formed the wealth base now enjoy.

As a matter of interest Bonegilla Migrant Experience’s Facebook page has 1453 likes – the Wodonga Historical Society's page has 3000. The society has Wodonga's early written history but Albury Museum has the prized Bonegilla collection because Wodonga didn't have a suitable museum.

The historical society is the city's research centre for history, often used by council staff and consultants engaged by the council, yet we have no telephone, no internet or electronic facilities, no toilet, no fire alarm.

The City of Yarra is to be congratulated for their move to change Australia Day from 26th January recognising that Australia’s values are changing. 

If your family had been hunted and killed it would be only the very shortest memory that could celebrate the day the hunters arrived as your national day. Australia is in slow motion in recognising human rights, it lags behind the rest of the world in many areas including the treatment of refugees and marriage equality.

Being lectured by the Prime Minister on values is something you couldn’t pull out of a cracker. Australian values are evolving, we once were content to treat women as second class citizens and not to count indigenous people as citizens at all. 

We were blind to domestic and family violence and abuse of children, the Australian flag waved over the imprisonment and discrimination against LGBTI people. 

The change to Australia Day is just catching up with the winds of change that are taking us in a better direction. If the government does not start to feel the breeze of social change it may well turn into a gale. 

In the current political climate which has stalled and rolling backwards many of the policies of the coalition fail the test of humanity.

We changed the anthem to reflect our interaction with history and contemporary values, it probably needs to be changed again. It would be a surprising to return to “God save the Queen” but with the retrograde attitudes of our leaders we might have brush up on the words.