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Things were different then or so it seemed. When Patricia Gould was first elected to Albury City Council over 34 years ago Albury basked in a pale of respectability. In 1974 Cleaver Bunton was mayor, and Bunton reeked respectability, a lineage of self-made men who preferred that business was done the Albury way. The respectable way. It wasn't done with great displays of ostentation. The residents of Albury were not necessarily after enlightenment or grand ideas. All they wanted was the potholes filled and their streets kerbed and guttered, and the sewerage connected. Like their parents before them if you needed to better yourself you needed the potholes filled, your home kerbed and guttered and connected to the sewer before anything else. When that was done then you could cast your aspirations afield. These self-made men knew what the people wanted, and they would have it eventually. To be a good mayor any public controversy was bad for council and subsequently was bad for Albury. To be seen as an effective and respected mayor the self-made man who usually filled the position had to be all things to all people. What if your view of the world verged on mediocrity and self-interest? You kept quiet about it because what was good for council and good for the people of Albury could be a bit mediocre and inward looking. That gave everyone a chance. After all, that's what democracy is all about. Mayoral respectability was also good for the elected aldermen (as they were known then, they became councillors in 1988) because respectability gave you the opportunity to have an eye open to the main chance and anything else that came your way.

Things were changing everything was becoming more sophisticated. To consider now walking up the front steps of Parliament House in Sydney with a brown paper bag full of cash for the then Premier of New South Wales, Robin Askin, in these days of the umbilical connection of financial institutions, would almost be considered quaint.

Of course of all the elected officials that had come and gone since James Fallon was first elected Mayor of Albury Town in 1859, there is no denying that some were to various degrees on the fiddle; why Borderline has been told one of our past mayors no longer with us figured prominently in the black-market in Albury during the Second World War. Yes Albury had a thriving black-market during the war. Like everything else it it was just a matter of who you knew. Of course it would be difficult to get elected if a fair proportion of your accumulated asset base was because of your success as a black marketer, therefore the need for respectability. The most effective way of getting respectability for the self-made man was to 'get on Council'. That's why a fair proportion of people who 'got on Council' did so not only to better the place, but to better themselves in the process. That was part of the deal. Unofficially. Making Albury a better place was not entirely altruistic. If an opportunity came their way then so be it, but it had to be done in a respectably discreet way. I suppose you could call it dignified, respectable corruption.

In those days the status of the mayor more or less commanded considerable respect which alas has lessened over the years. Look at that unsightly mess we see regularly look at Wollongong, a cesspit of corruption if ever there was one. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. What a mess. That's when respectability flies out the window. Alas the position of Mayor is no longer what it used to be. It seems that they are going the way of bank managers and station masters. In years past these two positions were well and truly on top of the pile when it came to 'respectability'. Would anyone today consider a bank manager one of our more prominent and respected citizens? An Alderman was a respected citizen, then you could go to him and complain about anything and he would see what he could do. Everyone was mates then too in a sense. I don't think that mateship extended to the pre-mechanical days, when the street gutters had to be swept and kept weed free with a shovel and broom. One would suppose local politics was something that a man who swept the gutters had no chance of aspiring to. Same with the labourer at the flour mills or a ganger on the railways. To stand for council you had to have aspirations, a hint of respectability in your professional or commercial activities and time on your hands. The then elected aldermen lived in a man's world. That's why Cleaver Bunton was mayor for 27 years of the post-war period of the Albury City Council. The trouble is that during his stewardship he preferred to ignore the inadequacies of many aldermen, later councillors, who came and went under his watch some who used the council to their own ends; that wasn't much of a concern as long as they never got too greedy and were discreet about it.

These councillors, saw their civic duty as a two-pronged attack to address their needs to strengthen their social standing and make a few bob as the opportunity arose. It is worth repeating the story told by Borderline before this, when close to half a century ago the internal route of the new Hume Highway was decided and the New South Wales Department of Main Roads had informed Albury City Council of the route. The next morning half the then council were to be seen along Parkinson Street (part of the route of the present Hume Bypass) at the crack of dawn exploring the opportunities that might arise. Borderline is still unsure whether the New South Wales Department of Main Roads had prefaced the document with 'confidential'. If they did it would ensure a full attendance. No one likes to miss out.

That's not to say you didn't have men of conscience like Bob Garland. Bob in the sixties called himself 'The Watchdog '. The self-anointed guardian of the people was always watching and come election time he would tell everyone that he was indispensable in protecting the peoples' interests. A similar campaign was repeated thirty or forty years later when the Democrats came up with the slogan 'keep the bastards honest'. Bob was indeed ahead of his time. Bob who was in the building trade was himself accused of inconsistencies in his method, that while he was busy watching other people there was no-one watching him. That's the trouble with some people putting themselves up as examples of virtuousness. There's always someone who suspects there's more to self-proclaimed righteousness than meets the eye. He never really uncovered any substantial instances of untoward activities. That wasn't really the point. People wanted reassuring. And 'The Watchdog' reassured and subsequently voted for him time and time again.

There were deals done in a manner of fashion. One prominent businessman actually had a proxy elected on Albury City Council. Albury should have been called Inner Circle Incorporated then again there would have been many other places worthy of the name.

They were different times you could say, but one way one could improve one's social status was through cultural activities. That was the new frontier as far as respectability was concerned in the seventies. When Tom Pearsall was elected mayor in 1973 he had performed the crowning triumph of the self-made man who started his business career raising pigs for the army, among other assorted activities although his tenure only lasted a year before he was unceremoniously thrown off the council. During his tenure he had a hand in appointing Gustav Pirstitz a curator or director. No-one seems sure what his position was except he looked after the Albury art collection, then housed upstairs in the old library recently demolished. Borderline remembers Mayor Pearsall in full mayoral regalia walking down Dean Street with this new European 'professor'. There was talk that he was a professor from the 'European country he came from' but the rumour was that he wasn't a professor at all. Mr Pirstitz as well as 'managing' the Albury Art Gallery also engaged in a private capacity as a restorer of paintings, a skill that was to be found wanting when some years later he took on a restoration of a painting held in a private collection. Luckily he had taken a photograph of the painting and when his attempt at restoration had resulted in the near obliteration of the work he painted over the photograph and presented it to his clients as the restored work. They went to the police. That was after Mr Pearsall had fallen from grace from the electorate, and the ultimate indignantly of not being re-elected and his electors thought he might have become a bit too greedy. That was part of the self-made improvement. You had to be seen as cultured. Not like nowadays, because culture has become more accessible. Around those times there was another alderman, Paul Wallace, a pharmacist and a bit of a wheeler and dealer. He wanted to add to the Albury art collection a copy of the 1624 painting, The Laughing Cavalier, by the great Dutch artist Frans Hals. The origins of the painting are not known but it seems he picked it up from some Paris sidewalk for a modest price. If Mr Wallace had taken the trouble to have perhaps studied the original he would have realised this particular Parisian dabbler had not gone to much trouble in getting a good likeness. The laughing cavalier looked more hysterically demented than anything else. Borderline enquired just the other day whether the Albury Art Gallery had in its collection a painting 'The Laughing Cavalier' in the style of Frans Hals and was told that it had not. Borderline suggested that perhaps the painting might have been culled from the art collection, but was told emphatically that it is not the policy nor has ever had the policy of culling works from the Albury Art Collection.

When Patricia Gould entered council in 1974 it seemed the world was in a state of flux. Woodstock seemed a distant memory and the Vietnam War was drawing to a humiliating close. Still Albury City Council, always wrapped in a cocoon of conservatism, carried on as if nothing had happened. Like middle Australia everywhere we just carried on. The exception was she was not in the traditional sense the self-made woman. She left school early and had modest beginnings. She had no great ideological barrow to push, although her sympathies lay with the Liberal Party. She could enter this man's world because she understood the virtues of discretion and a non-controversial approach to the job. She understood that ideologues and people inclined to rock the boat was not the traditional Albury way that and be nice to people. She understood consensus was not something people argued about. Consensuses were almost a telepathic understanding of one another. To call it a nod and a wink would have been way too vulgar. Part of her understanding of consensus was turning a blind eye to other councillors' failings.

She was simply continuing the Albury way of doing things. The discreet way. Some might say that this led to mediocrity and a lack of vision. No it didn't, it was just that its structure was more in tune with the lowest common denominator. They didn't call it this because you could call it anything.

When Cr Duncan-Strelec became mayor in 1995 things changed. Perhaps forever.

The difference was that Cr Duncan-Strelec, even though she had her mentors in the old guard, was her own woman. She didn't give a damn about convention. She wanted power. Power was to be preferred to the traditional idea of the mayor being the facilitator of a consensus approach to matters before council. She wanted to lead from the front. Cr Duncan-Strelec didn't have much time for the traditional way of doing things; a consensus was more of an irritation than anything else. What Cr Duncan-Strelec wanted was absolute power, but to still give the impression of conforming to the democratic process. She was prepared to do anything to achieve this end first when she consolidated the Strategic Response Group initiated by Arthur Frauenfelder when he was mayor. She turned this benign outfit into some clandestine, almost autonomous inner sanctum of power, that excluded most councillors or paid lip-service to them if it was absolutely necessary. She also understood that such a method needed a solid power base not only among the council but among the executive of Albury City Council. Not like the old days, when the Town Clerk as he was known then was a mate, and would do almost everything he was told. Now it had to be strategic. There had to be a plan. This was a strategic alliance necessary to humble and usurp your enemies and fundamental to her maintaining power well, theoretically anyhow. It was for this reason she decided to support the present general manager over Robert Brown, considered the front-runner for the position after the departure of Mark Henderson in less than usual circumstances. For a background on that story follow this link: http://borderlinealburywodonga.com/page1.html   Her most successful endeavour to control the numbers was through her faithful apprentice in the power game, Cr Henk van de Ven. The trouble is Henk had ambitions of his own but not the numbers. It was a bit like being stuck in the mud. Very frustrating. He, like Amanda and Alice Glachan and a few others, was prone to give people a sudden bout akin to an inferiority complex such was their apparent superior grasp of the facts about all things. They believed they were leaders. So what if the people of Albury were occasionally led up the garden path… It was a much superior garden path to the wilderness the good folk of Albury would find themselves in if they hadn't received any guidance at all from them.

If you didn't go along with all of this you were classed as an enemy of THE VISION. Of course lots of people have visions all types of visions, like religious visions (rare) and substance induced visions (plentiful).   People who enter politics all have a vision, of various degrees of integrity, and that's all well and good. But you have to have THE VISION. Amanda has THE VISION, so does Alice. Henk has a vision, but it only extends to being Mayor of Albury. A good vision includes the people of Albury sometimes having some input. Some visionaries liked this type of thing even if it was just tinkering around the edges. You could say Amanda had an autocratic vision. The trouble is the vision burnt out rather quickly.

The problem, however, was that Cr Duncan-Strelec's reluctance to compromise made her a few enemies. Her faith in her own abilities were such that she didn't much care how it was all done in public or private. Treading on toes was all part of the process. Discretion was akin to compromise. As the old saying goes, 'you live by the sword, you die by the sword', and her last stint as mayor in 2006-07, after a relentless backroom campaign against the then mayor Arthur Frauenfelder, saw her method in keeping power fall apart. Probably because she was kicking too many heads. Poor Arthur, he was a traditional consensus man to an extent. That's why he wanted to be the only spokesmen for the council. If anything was to be said, he would say it. Understandably, there were rumblings that it had all gone to his head. Still one could suppose that such leanings were ultra-consensus as he didn't want the council message bastardized by councillors who didn't know what they were talking about which was just about everyone.   I suppose he had THE VISION, except it didn't foretell when he was knifed in the back. Amanda triumphed, but her glory was short-lived and within a year she slowly began to self-destruct. Again the wish to replace her with a less confrontational mayor in the time-honoured sense prevailed. The traditional Albury way. Whether or not he was the best person for the job was entirely beside the point.