Raymond Island Ferry
The Raymond Island Ferry provides the only link between the island and the mainland, but also acts as an effective barrier to faster development of the island community. A ferry has run between Paynesville and Raymond Island since 1889, and has been an integral and sometimes controversial feature of life on Raymond Island. Some continue to call for the ferry to be replaced by a bridge; others believe the ferry is an integral part of life on the island. In 2011, the East Gippsland Shire Council is conducting another review of "Raymond Island Access", based on an action to "Develop a plan to resolve access to Raymond Island" in the Council Plan 2009-2013. This follows earlier considerations which reached a decision to maintain the existing ferry service (e.g., in 2003 ). Before the current ferry was commissioned in 1997, the topic was the subject of an academic paper in the Rural Society Journal which examined "the controversy over the proposal to link Raymond Island, Victoria to the mainland through construction of a bridge, to replace the current ferry service". Ultimately, the issue has been discussed for decades without being permanently resolved, and opinions remain divided about the relative merits of ferry versus bridge.
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Famous quotes containing the words island and/or ferry:
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)