For whom the bell tolls !

From July the citizens of Wollongong will hear a new sound in the CBD.

The bell in the court house bell tower will recommence chiming after remaining silent since 1949. It remains to be decided whether it will chine only to record the hour - the half hour or every fifteen minutes.

No doubt this will not please everybody. Some people seem to consider any sound to be a form of noise pollution - as evidenced by the silencing of the steam whistle on that magnificent old steam train that used to pull the " Cockatoo Run ".

Well over a century ago the people of Sydney were able to adjust their sense of time - and knock off for lunch - by the firing of " the noon day gun ".

Of course watches were a rare item in those days and only afforded by the very rich, but the noon day gun ceased well before the advent of the digital watch, transistor radio and mobile phone - which now make knowing the time in reach for even the most humble peasant.

Nostalgia is latent in all of us, and hopefully the nay sayers will not manage to silence the return of a institution from a past era.