More than 240 properties were resumed and 750 local residents were affected by the decision. Over the years as a roving reporter, I reckon I interviewed half of them! They had campaigned, protested and lobbied, to no avail.

Most took their share of the Government's then-$120 million compensation (final tally $139 million) and moved on.

Some, like 73-year-old Robert Green, was still there five years on, a forgotten victim. A Luddenham resident, he lived on the edge of the airport boundary but right in the flight path, yet the Government wouldn't buy his home.

Elizabeth and Charlie Lia had the same problem - if a jet had landed, they could almost touch its wing.

There was injustice all round for those who missed out on a package to vacate ''The Creek.''

Ms Kim Jelfs, then 30 and the mother of two young

children, had just moved in from the city to escape the rat race.

At Christmas, 1991, I met Ada and Sebastian Pollicina, who'd put their life savings, $50,000, into the purchase of 10 scenic acres (about four hectares) in Luddenham, near Penrith, in 1983.

They spent $40,000 clearing and fencing, dug a dam and planned a home for their young family of four when they paid off their debt.

Badgerys airport put them in limbo, at the end of the runway. The Federal Government refused to buy them out because there was no home on the place. And, Catch 22, they couldn't build a house anyway under new planning laws because of excessively high airport noise forecasts.

These are just a few of the many tragic cases that flew in with the Badgerys Creek airport news. Now, 62 years since the second airport debate began, The Creek has been dumped as a second airport.

With a pen stroke, after hundreds of lives were disrupted, some irreparably, and $1 billion wasted on resuming homes, on roads to fast-track airport traffic, the search begins afresh.

Now, it seems it's Hawkesbury's turn as the feds

focus attention on the Richmond RAAF Base. God

spare us all from political ditherers.