Saturday, October 6, 2007

60 Roads to recovery



The Federal Government had a good idea. They decided to do something about the awful dirt roads in the bush. They didn’t realise that the good idea was carrying a contagious bad idea on its back. Under the scheme, Bombala Council received a very nice grant to fix up New Line Road that was narrow and had corners that had to be negotiated slowly. Otherwise you could easily find yourself upside down in a paddock or squashed against a tree. Ben once came close to being squashed but happily lived to become famous.
New Line Road was built in 1868 primarily to enable slow lumbering bullock wagon trains to carry wool from the Monaro to the coast and it hadn’t changed much since those days. It was narrow, picturesque and parts of the road were a shady green tunnel because trees that stood on either side had grown up and over and joined limbs to close the canopy. It was one of those attractions that made visitors to the area all warm inside and want to live in Creewah. Most got over it.

The road was transformed by the grant. Instead of having a 40 kph safe speed it could now be driven at 80 rising to 100 kph in sections. It was great. Bombala Council, managers of the shire and Bombala town, known as the Timber Town because of its expertise in logging, had done an excellent job. On both sides of the widened and smooth gravel road was a 20-metre levelled safety area. This area had a second purpose; on it were piled the hundreds of big trees that had been pushed over during recovery of the road. They made a deep and continuous line about 20 km long, 40 km counting both sides. They also made an impenetrable barrier for kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. Foolish animals that strayed onto the road could no longer get off it and were recycled by vehicles. ‘Bloody kangaroo jumped out at me. Dented me door; all should be shot’.

One of the reasons for moving the trees back from the road was to reduce the likelihood of the trees getting in the way of vehicles and causing crashes, but equally importantly, to break the drip line. Tree leaves condense water from the air particularly at night because they present a cold surface to the sky. They then drip this condensate onto the road that they overhang. This makes soft patches in the gravel which become pot holes. This is well known, frequently described and scientifically proven. Pot holes that appear with even greater frequency on stretches of road without overhanging trees have unknown origins unrelated to science. ‘Probably dug by bloody wombats’.

Her father used to drive on the wrong side of the road in ‘The Pinger’ to reduce the effects on its suspension of unscientific potholes once common in the treeless mallee scrub country of South Australia and Victoria. Potholes are smoother when approached in the wrong direction he explained to the strained passengers watching intently for oncoming vehicles. We need the government to introduce a policy of left hand side on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and right hand side on other days.

Tom had been very pleased to see the trees piled along New Line Road after the road had been recovered. He was a wood carter selling his truckloads of pre-split firewood around the state. His first action was to erect signs on stretches of the wood piles. They said in capitals, ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OFF’. It didn’t take him many months to clear the good wood and sell it. The rubbish wood was left behind to rot or burn in the next bushfire. Now the animals could move through the gaps.

Tom was now woodless so he felled a few extra public trees along New Line Road to keep his business going and got Forestry into one of his roadside properties to clear-fell that area. The system was that Forestry would take out what they needed and leave the rest to him. They would pay him $4000 for their wood and not charge him for the felling. It was a good deal. Basil was similarly tempted because he could use $4000 for a new car, but luckily the flush passed and the trees on his property survived. The felling contagion in our area stopped at Tom for a while but quietly gained strength.

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