In different elements of Victoria, two of Mr Lagstrom’s fellow judges have been concurrently inspecting the opposite entrants.

Finally, in one of many few competitions to make worldwide Olympic Committee delegates appear impulsive by comparability, the Tidy Cities judges will collate and talk about their respective assessments in a process that may culminate in a particular award ceremony at Lilydale in November.

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When the judges lastly collect to make their selections, “heated discussions” typically ensue over which Tidy City ought to turn into “Tidiest City”. This strikes one as an odd revelation, for Mr Lagstrom’s manners are so, effectively, tidy that it’s tough to think about him ever succumbing to abuse.

He insists, nevertheless, that Tidy Cities is extra an train that seeks to advertise group motivation than a fully-fledged competitors.

On Wednesday, after he had accomplished a two-hour morning tour of Camperdown with the native mayor, Mrs Patricia Robertson, he was handled to not an official reception on the shire council workplace, however a cup of espresso and a chin wag within the employees tea room.

By midday he was again on the Princes Freeway, behind the steering wheel of his Lancer, a peeling Tidy Cities sticker connected to the rear window. He was certain for Apollo Bay for a 2 pm appointment, driving alongside a meandering, fern-fringed mountain street from Colac.

As soon as on the scenic Nice Ocean Street vacation resort and fishing port, the customer was greeted by the native Tidy Towners, Mrs Lorraine Flynn and Mr Perc Learey.

In some cities, extra intent on profitable than Apollo Bay, it’s an enormous occasion when a Tidy City choose involves city. However though Apollo Bay is a newcomer to this system, there was a lot to view there, together with a garden cemetery, an outdated theatre, a nursing dwelling and the township’s delight, a completely operational duplicate of a famed fountain.

“Our personal Trevi fountain on the foreshore,” learn Apollo Bay’s Tidy Cities submission, offered to Mr Lagstrom throughout his tour. “All the time a focus of our foreshore, however ‘introduced again to life’ by Lions Membership members and different volunteers. Plumbing, portray, the outdated plaque restored — and due to Perc Learey’s TLC a sexy backyard of flowers now surrounds it. Perc additionally repeatedly mows the grass across the fountain.”

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Yearly the Tidy City judging course of begins within the northern half of Victoria, theoretically the primary space to learn from improved climate that spring heralds, and culminates within the southern half some weeks later. Mr Lagstrom believes that ideally, although not virtually, the inspections ought to begin later within the 12 months.

Though Tidy City judges adhere to a strict set of tips, they’re positively not brownshirts of the again blocks who terrorise townspeople for discarded Paddle Pop sticks in primary streets.

However educating metropolis slickers whose solely expertise of the Tidy Cities program is the blurred references on indicators glimpsed from inside a dashing automotive has not been devoid of its difficulties. Certainly, the time period “tidy city” has lengthy been extensively exploited as a time period of disparagement amongst detractors of such locations as pristine Canberra.

“Anybody I’ve spoken to believes that ‘Tidy Cities’ means mowing lawns and trimming edges,” mentioned the 62-year-old Mr Lagstrom. “We don’t examine for litter caught in drain. What we’re thinking about is bettering cities and making them higher locations through which to stay. I by no means criticise. I feel that will be damaging. If you happen to took an authoritarian method to nation folks they’d inform you to get stuffed.”

On the finish of Mr Lagstrom’s Apollo Bay inspection, the Tidy City committee offered him with a papier-mache lighthouse (full with its personal battery-operated bulb and ornamental pebbles at its base). It was, it ought to be careworn, purely a gesture of goodwill.

Tidy City judges are incorruptible. Nothing will encourage them to disregard a poorly manicured garden cemetery, a bandstand plagued by beer bottles or a weed-stricken nature strip. However they’re not cavalier critics both. A former senior state public servant, Mr Lagstrom is a quietly spoken and neat determine, although even a Tidy City choose has his scruffy moments. Throughout his inspections it was refreshing to detect a little bit of naked flesh uncovered by way of a small gap in certainly one of his black socks. “I’m not a tidy particular person,” he later confessed.

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On the finish of the day he returned to his motel, the place he dined on pumpkin soup and steak Diane within the restaurant till he retired to Room 21 to compile his experiences. It wasn’t till past midnight that Mr Lagstrom lastly retired for the evening He was off once more within the Lancer at 7.45 am to examine 4 cities close to Geelong: Bannackburn, Inverleigh, Lethbridge and Meredith.

He’s met at Bannackburn at 9 am by Mr Ken Middleton, the shire engineer. Throughout a tour of the city in shire Falcon wagon Mr Middleton stops to point out Mr Lagstrom a brick gazebo erected by the local people in the primary road. Sadly, in the course of the evening, an untidy townie has failed to position his empty beer bottles in one of many bins adorned by the native schoolchildren as a part of the shire’s Tidy Cities marketing campaign.