From the mayor's desk: Building a future tourism strategy

This week has been busy with catching up on many things like the future tourism strategy, Forbes' economic development and heritage conservation for the Shire.

It is so important we continue to plan for future tourism despite what is going on currently in this space with travel not being encouraged.

Forbes is situated in an ideal location on the Newell Highway and we are such a beautiful location with many accommodation options and wonderful attractions to draw people to stop and stay for a few days. We do, however, need to have a plan to ensure we can provide all the amenities to entice the intrepid traveller.

Last weekend the Cumberland Bird Observatory came to Forbes to visit our amazing Gum Swamp Wildlife Reserve. They were blown away with the area and the diverse array of birds to be found at Gum Swamp.

Their words were "first class!" Currently Council is working with the Forbes Art Society to install new bird hides and the area has been closed off for the installation and construction stage, this is to ensure the project can be conducted in the safest possible way.

Please be mindful of the signs and fenced off areas. It will open back up again soon with new hides and it will be fantastic!

This stands for Food Organics Garden Organics and in the coming months you will hear many helpful hints and encouragement from Council to join in throwing your scraps into the green bin and not in the red bin.

The staff tell me they are going to audit my bin and see where I can improve, which I am more than happy to, as every little bit helps.

I hope you will all join me in trying to reduce organic waste going into landfill and instead going to be processed into beautiful organic soil for our farmers.