As the dust settles on the conclusion of a beloved letters column, readers across New South Wales have been reflecting on what made it special — and few figures have drawn more affection than cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, whose work ran alongside the column's correspondence for years.
A Heartfelt Send-Off for Cathy Wilcox
Joy Cooksey of Harrington summed up the sentiment of many when she argued that no algorithm could ever replicate what Wilcox brings to the page. "A real cartoonist's picture paints the thousand words no artificial artist will ever achieve, just as a copyist's attempt doesn't create an original," she wrote, adding that Wilcox's work endures because it carries "a real heart and soul" that artificial intelligence simply cannot manufacture.
Jim Dewar of Davistown took a more lyrical approach, offering a limerick-style farewell. Identifying himself as an "old wooden-spoonist," he expressed hope that any break Wilcox might be taking would be brief, and that she would "return to the letters page soonest."
Memories of the Bee Gees — Before They Were Famous
The column's final exchanges also stirred a modest wave of nostalgia around an earlier thread about the Bee Gees in their formative years. Lyn Langtry of East Ryde offered a vivid snapshot from the mid-1960s: a group of schoolgirls at the Royal Easter Show, watching bands perform in a building "little more than a shed." Among the acts that day were the Bee Gees. Langtry noted that her diary from the time recorded only the name — with no further commentary — a detail that, in hindsight, speaks volumes about how little anyone suspected what was coming.
Pub Loopholes, Pill Packets and Small-Town Recognition
Readers also chimed in on a range of other threads, revealing the column's characteristic breadth. Ron Besdansky of Northbridge recalled attending folk music concerts at a city pub in the 1970s, where at 11pm the venue would begin selling food as a mechanism to keep the alcohol flowing. His workaround of choice — paying a dollar for what he dubbed the "statutory sausage roll" — kept him in good standing with licensing law, though he was quick to distinguish it from the democracy sausage of election-day fame.
A philosophical question came from Marjie Williamson of Blaxland, who pondered whether left-handed people approach a foil sheet of tablets from the opposite corner to right-handers. Williamson confessed to always beginning at the top-right tablet and wondered if handedness governs even this most mundane of habits.
Don Bain of Port Macquarie, meanwhile, reflected warmly on being recognised by a staff member at his local op-shop — a moment he described as doubling the total number of such public identifications he had experienced, the first having come from his pharmacist back in 2019.
Seppo Ranki of Glenhaven contributed perhaps the most intriguing anecdote: his grandson, while visiting glow-worms at Tamborine Mountain, was asked by a volunteer whether he knew a Seppo Ranki. The volunteer mentioned having once worked at the paper and invited the grandfather along on a future visit — though by the time the family returned, the volunteer had moved on. Ranki wondered aloud whether this might have constituted "a rare sighting of a former Granny or editorship operative."
Together, the farewell dispatches paint a picture of a community that found genuine connection through the small, the strange and the sincere — the hallmarks of a column now drawn to a close.
