Persistence and hard work clearly is the only way the Border is going to get the hospital it deserves.
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In the many months since the Victorian and NSW governments announced there would be a half-billion dollar rebuild of the Albury hospital, the stonewalling of what the community needs has been on in earnest.
That was especially pig-headed when Daniel Andrews still filled the post of Victorian premier - he simply refused to listen and quite arrogantly dismissed any other view as irrelevant.
But from the absolute get-go, Albury-Wodonga and the much wider community have said it's not good enough.
An estimated billion dollar all-new hospital is the only option, if we truly are to be serious about more than adequately meeting the region's public health needs for the decades ahead.
What has been especially frustrating over this period has been the Victorian government patronisingly telling us to be grateful.
It throws in that that half-billion dollar figure for the hatchet job proposed and thinks we're going to be confused by such big numbers.
What has really brought the shortfalls of the plan into sharp relief is a letter from health service chief executive Bill Appleby and chair Jonathan Green in which it was stated clearly how the "generous contributions" of the two governments still made for a "grossly disappointing" result.
Wodonga Council has been vocal from the very start about this deeply flawed proposal.
The letter, resulting from a request by NSW MP Amanda Cohn, was leaped upon by mayor Ron Mildren, who quickly identified it as a "cry for help" to properly fix the Border's public health service.
As he says: "I read that letter as them saying to us 'we cannot get or deliver what this community needs and deserves with the funding and the process that is in place'."
It would have been easy to accept defeat and not continue to fight for the right hospital plan, as perhaps government MPs expected would most likely happen.
Thank goodness though no one has thrown in the towel because, as ex-mayor Kev Poulton says, "you fight damn hard, you just have that gut feeling that it doesn't feel right and you win it".
