As one Wagga eyesore gets a makeover, we're asking: What's next?

Just days after Region asked the question, “Why is the entrance to Wagga’s main street a post-apocalyptic hellscape?” we received the perfect answer.

The weed-choked former service station block on the corner of Baylis and Edward streets was finally given a makeover.

After digging around to find the owners of the $2.2 million block, the best we were able to ascertain was that Purple Sakura Pty Ltd (??) had purchased the property in August 2021.

With little more to go on and no contact details for the owner, we put out the call to “drop by to give their multimillion-dollar investment a mow”, and they did.

Sure, there’s a long way to go before Wagga’s premier eyesore is rehabilitated, but a fresh mow and a clear-up of all the rubbish is a bloody good start!

The silhouette of the late wanderer Larry Skewes has also gone in the blitz, which will divide local opinion, but in life, he came and he went, so one could argue that a temporal tribute is appropriate.

Curiously, the mystery gardeners left one lone prickly pear standing proudly in the middle of the lot like a throwback to the ornamental cactus of the 1970s and ’80s that once graced caravan parks and gardens across the inland.

As for what’s next for the long-vacant block, we can’t say.

Its former life as a service station during the years of leaded petrol means that the site will require some serious decontamination and Region understands that the long-rumoured hotel is on the backburner.

Let’s hope a civic-minded developer delivers a legacy construction befitting what is arguably the most prominent location in NSW’s largest inland city.

At a council meeting in March last year, then-Deputy Mayor Jenny McKinnon noted that the entrance to Wagga along the Sturt Highway “looks terrible”.

Councillor Richard Foley echoed the sentiment, adding that the eastern approach looked “absolutely appalling” and “like a lunar landscape”.

Like many regional cities, Wagga’s outskirts are zoned for industrial and large-floor commercial operations and, while Cr McKinnon is not suggesting this be changed, she spoke about investing in greenery and cleaning up unnecessary eyesores.

Out on the western side of town, the old Rivcrete lot on the Pearson Street and Sturt and Olympic highways roundabout needs some love, but Bunnings does have the green light for its $24.9 million development and will hopefully get to work soon.

The Murrumbidgee Mill continues to cast a long sad shadow over Wagga’s CBD and remains the source of much local discussion after more than a decade of big ideas, promises and failed developments.

The latest turn of events saw a portion of the site return to the market with a price tag north of $5 million. While preparations had begun to put up a six-storey Holiday Inn on this eastern portion of the site, it was marketed as a “blank canvas development opportunity”.

To the east is an abandoned servo, sitting behind a chain-link fence, that would be good to see gone and the nearby orange tank is well past its prime.

There are positive signs on the way to Forest Hill, where a once-glorious ”Big Thing” is coming back to life.

In June, local builder Kyle North-Flanagan began working to restore the iconic Big Murray Cod sign outside the former hatcheries.

The poor old fish had fallen into disrepair and in early 2024 suffered the ultimate indignity of being tagged by spray-can-wielding delinquents.

Kyle, who recently purchased the property, got a team of helpers together to begin the restoration and launched a GoFundMe that could still use more support.

“Even with the way it was, you’d still see people stopping to get a photo with it, and everyone remembers the hatchery, so it was really something that we wanted to do,” he told us.

“We’ve pulled it down and we’ll take off the old sheet metal and then go through and replace the bits that have rusted and strengthen it all up.

“We want to get it looking like it used to so it’ll be the exact same shape and we’re getting it all repainted so it looks fresh.”

Work is now well underway and Kyle has promised an update in the coming weeks.

Watch this space.