Community & Business
29 February, 2024
Residents fed up with road
RESIDENTS living on Weiland Road in Wondecla are fed up with having to drive a four-wheel drive track to get to their properties, after rain and increased traffic caused significant damage to the rural road.
For the past 12 months, property owner Damien Mcleod has been asking Tablelands Regional Council to maintain the road, reaching out several times regarding potholes, whoa-boys (earth banks that intercept runoff flowing down roads) and minor slips.
Despite efforts to communicate the urgency of the situation and even a meeting involving various stakeholders, including TRC, no concrete plan to fix the road was made.
After three emails between February and June last year with little to no correspondence back, Mr Mcleod finally received a reply.
“On 12 June, I received a reply stating the road had been inspected again and again, and it met the defects level and that the scope of works was to be completed by September 2023,” he said.
“This response was only achieved through a meeting with the road supervisor of TRC on Wieland Road.
“The supervisor's comments were that ‘the road has not been done properly, the whoa-boys need to be graded out, and the camber of the road changed to the left for the water to be redirected to the bottom of Wieland Road’.
“My initial request and ongoing requests were directly in regard to the surface of the road while my neighbour's concerns were with the whoa-boys and the redirection of water from Wieland Rd that had flooded and continued to flood their house.
“The supervisor was in agreeance on the day with me that the road surface needed repair, and he agreed that the existing whoa-boys were the reason their property was flooding. He advised action would be taken.
“Within the following week, I returned from work to see that machinery had been on our road and the whoa-boys had been blocked with dirt, but no work had been done to the surface of the road.”
During this time, traffic on the road also increased, with new properties being bought in area, and Mr Mcleod noticed more and more potholes.
After TC Jasper and the extreme rain event that followed in December, the road was destroyed, with several washouts turning it into a large red mud pit.
Two months on, the road is still yet to be repaired, and Mr Mcleod has had enough.
“I have been in constant contact with TRC regarding immediate repair of our road as I have materials I paid for months ago that cannot be transported to my property due to the poor state of the road,” he said.
“My wife has slid off the road and has damaged her car also due to its condition. Thankfully, she was not injured.
“My neighbours feel very frustrated because they had been told by the council workers that I was the person directly to blame for the blocking of the whoa-boys, which is completely incorrect.
“I am offended, I am sickened, and I am outraged that as a ratepayer (who has no access to any council services as I am off-grid), I have made a simple request for assistance that has been completely ignored and brushed aside on multiple occasions to find that I have become the apparent target of blame from these council workers.
“The water flow from Wieland Road has absolutely no negative impact or effect on my property whatsoever as we are at the top of the hill.”
Councillor Kevin Cardew said he was aware of the major issues surrounding Weiland Road, saying it had been on his and council’s radar.
He said he was appalled by the state of the road and that he had been advocating for it to be upgraded once the wet weather passed.
“The plan is to get gravel back on the road to make it accessible for residents and then open the drains to try and divert stormwater away from the road,” Cr Cardew said.
“It was a huge wet season, and there are a lot of roads that have been damaged – even the bitumen roads are getting potholes.
“There are many roads, particularly in the southern part of the Tablelands, where residents are finding it difficult to access their properties … and it is now just a matter of prioritising them and waiting for the roads to be dry enough so we can get machinery there.”
One of Cr Cardew’s biggest concerns was whether emergency vehicles could access properties with the current state of the road.
