by Mat Churchill

Living in a small town has its benefits. You see familiar faces when you walk down the main street, a taxi ride home doesn't cost more than $20, and there's no such thing as peak hour traffic.

Unfortunately there are some negatives that tend to go with the territory. You need to travel to see the latest blockbuster at the cinema, Metallica won't be coming to your local venue, and most of all, rumours true or false can do irreparable damage to reputations and friendships.

Growing up in Castlemaine in central Victoria, a town of around 7,000 people, it was hard not to get caught up in the gossip mill of who kissed who, who bashed who, who killed who. OK, I've made it sound more like Deadwood than Castlemaine but you get my point.

Having spent a little under a year in my new home town of Port Douglas, that familiar rumour mill seems to be working harder than the sugar mill up the road.

While there is still the same old goss regarding relationships, I've noticed that a lot of effort is centred on local businesses; how they're going, why they're closing, who's buying what and why, who should be doing what and why?

Unfortunately for absolutely everyone involved, the sewing circle has been working overtime when it comes to Haba.

It seemed that even before the boat had touched the bottom of the Marina, people were speculating on the cause with much of the talk questioning the legitimacy of the incident.

The fact is it doesn't matter what the cause is to anybody but the owners, employees, their families, and the investigators (oh, and the insurance company but does anyone really care about them anyway?).

Put yourself in the shoes of Mr Funch. You look at your livelihood, and the livelihood of your employees lying at the bottom of the Marina. You're forced to close your shop and sack your staff, and sell your equipment until an option, any option, presents itself which enables you to operate again.

That's bad enough. But then you have to put up with unsubstantiated (and whispered) accusations about your business' financial position and your personal life.

I don't know much about Oscar Wilde, but I presume when he said "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, that's NOT being talked about" he didn't run a SCUBA diving operation.

Sometime next week or early the week after the investigation will conclude and answers as to how Haba sunk in the early hours of last Sunday will no doubt be made public.

Until then, let's just focus on helping those who need it, including Haba's employees, and rally around Mr Funch and his family like the community has so many times for others this year.