As well as being devastating for struggling farmers, the long dry spell in much of Outback Australia has also been causing plenty of problems for the rural road users.
A shortage of water has meant that the ‘regular’ grading of unsealed roads in some areas has now become less than regular. While parts of Central Queensland have been having some rain in the past few days, the impact of the dry weather is already being felt by grey nomads travelling on bumpy roads.
The Central Highlands Regional Council recently advised that it couldn’t keep to its grading schedule for the Sapphire Gemfields’ unsealed road network because water was needed for effective road maintenance.
“Water is used by the road crews to suppress dust on and around the site and as an agent to bind the gravel and create a smooth road surface,” Councillor Gai Sypher told the Central Queensland News. “While there is a standpipe in Sapphire, we don’t use treated water on roads and the nearest untreated water supply is a dam nearly 40 kilometres away – that’s a 80-kilometre round trip, times many trips for each job – and clearly would escalate the cost of the road maintenance to an unsustainable level.”
She said that council officers would continue to regularly inspect the roads and ‘patch’ any problems that are deemed hazardous to public safety.
“The message is clear: drive to conditions,” Cr Sypher said. “Excessive speed and hard braking creates potholes and corrugations, so take it easy on the roads for their sake and your safety.”
Despite some recent early summer rain, the Bureau of Meteorology is not able to offer much encouragement to farmers – or travellers – in the area.
“Last year we did have a fairly average storm season in the Central Highlands,” said forecaster Michael Peach. “But as spring and summer progresses the average rainfall is forecast to be lower than usual.” * Are you finding unsealed roads bumpier than usual this year? Which roads have been particularly good or bad? Comment below.
We have just finished a 13,000km trip on a lot of the dirt roads from Qld through to Broome and back. There were graders on the Tanami and the Gibb River Roads. Also the road into the Bungle Bungles was just about finished. We also traveled on the Duncan Highway and up around Roper Bar. Although there were no graders that we saw, but the roads were reasonable if you travel at a speed suitable to the conditions. Many on the roads we traveled were going far too fast.