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The Albury City Council spends close to $360,000 on tourism. Of course sometimes people visiting places such as Albury have a different perception of their destination than the paid tourist promoters who peddle all types of spin and notions of success, especially the kind that justifies their existence when they reapply for their grants

The first stop one usually goes to when visiting almost any place in provincial Australia is the main street - the main drag is where you go to get the feel of a place, to appraise the possibilities and spirit of the place. In these parts you often had no choice once you drove right through them … Euroa, Benalla Wangaratta. That was never good enough, the drive-by appraisal. Now that many of these towns and cities have been bypassed by the Hume freeway you have to want to go there, hence you will notice that many of them have gone to considerable expense to beautify the main street.

So it is disappointing to see the way Albury City Council has allowed the Eastern End of Dean Street to suggest that the precinct has turned into some slightly seedy looking grog strip. How unfortunate then, as many do take the tour of Dean Street as you come off the freeway. Where once the fine Victorian building, the Terminus Hotel stood (which mysteriously burnt down in December 2005), a liquor outlet stands . 1st Choice Liquor Superstore (owned by Coles). Opposite is Dan Murphy's (owned by Woolworths).

It is obvious that both Dan Murphy's and First Choice have not made any effort to incorporate their businesses into a more aesthetic design. It is obvious too that the Albury City Council has not shown much leadership in the matter. The result is not an inviting prospect. And the streetscape at the eastern end of town has been rendered sterile and uninteresting .

Once, people, both visitors and locals alike, would visit Dean Street to go window shopping- a 'well dressed window' was important. It invited customers,it attracted people to the centre of the city. Mates the department store, that ceased thirty or forty years ago had a full time window dresser. It was an essential part of the retail business.

A well presented 'main street ' is essential to a vibrant CBD. If Albury is to remain competitive in the tourist stakes, or simply to attract locals, presentation is becoming increasingly important in the fiercely competitive tourist market, or attrackting shoppers. Not to mention the virtues of civic pride. No amount of spin and coloured brochures will rectify the situation if the bricks and mortar, the streetscapes and the like are seen to be derelict. Sometimes you don't get a second chance.

The propensity of organisations such as Destination Albury Wodonga with a contribution of $360,000 from the Albury City Council (not to mention Wodonga's contribution) flutters all it's spin. Yet the council at the same time allows this sort of development and that detracts from Albury.

It reminds Borderline of a different yet similar context on how councils seem to operate in seeming ignorance of the nature of impressions and how they work.

A few years back in Yackandandah, there was a shop with the most eclectic collection of bric-a-brac that one could ever hope to see, you could even say it was a junk shop. It was very popular with the tourists. The proprietor even had a contraption with all these mugs hanging off it, old mugs of numerous designs that you could probably get for new at a reject shop for a dollar. When Borderline asked him why he was selling this 'problematic merchandise' he told me that that it was a popular line. Why? Because when buses came bringing with them more elderly tourists they always forgot some implement or whatever to soak their false teeth in. Hence the demand. It was a very popular old weatherboard shop.

Then, one day the owner of the property thought that Yackandandah was popular indeed and needed a modern motel to cater for the tourists, so he didn't renew the lease and pulled down the building and built in its place and surrounds a fairly ordinary motel. Would the tourists go to Yackandandah if this process was a recurring reaction to tourism?

The tourists still came but the experience becomes that much more diminished. This practice sometimes is repeated until the equilibrium is disturbed to such an extent until the buses don't come.

Albury take note.