A TIMELY injection of Federal funds will replace seven of Kyogle Council’s 193 rotting timber bridges and allow residents on the other side to conduct business that most take for granted.
The $2.2m funding, matched dollar for dollar with Kyogle Council, will see the failing Barretts Bridge at Old Bonalbo rebuilt in steel and concrete before the end of the year.
Six more deteriorating timber bridges on the Lions and Gradys Creek roads will also be rebuilt with modern materials and will be widened to dual-lane.
For Earl and Marilyn Grundy, who run the 520 hectare “Glenhuon” property at Capeen, the news has come as a joyous relief, as most of their income is currently cut off from the rest of the working world.
Recently the Grundys shuttled 108 Angus and Droughtmasters over the critically load limited Barretts Bridge to two waiting double-deckers in a task that took seven hours instead of 60 minutes and doubled his transport costs to market.
While the reduced profit from that sale may just keep them from having to apply to Centrelink, the remainder of their income is in native and plantation timber that must be trucked out with heavy vehicles.
“If we took out the timber like we’ve done with our cattle the transport would cost more than we’d get for the finished product,” Mr Grundy said.
The couple already spent $80,000 on the access bridge into their own property.
A decade ago NSW Forestry planted spotted gum on 200ha on Glenhuon and paid the Grundy’s a modest wage in return, but after that government agency dissolved most of its plantation enterprises the family inherited a valuable asset, but have no income if they can’t harvest.
“It’s about putting food on the table,” said Mr Grundy.
Failed bridges elsewhere in the Kyogle Council area are also costing primary producers, with Yugilbar Station faced with extra transport while trucking triticale an extra 55km to market after the Tooloonki Creek bridge failed in March 2014.
According to Mayor Daniel Mulholland, her council didn’t get support from the first round of the Coalition Government’s Bridges Renewal Program because it focused on the ‘last mile’ of infrastructure leading to places like saleyards and industrial estates.
Cr Mulholland said her council, with help from Page MP Kevin Hogan, convinced Deputy Premier Warren Truss that for Kyogle’s primary producers, the ‘first mile’ was vastly more important.
“People here are putting food on the plates of people in regions and cities: This needs to be remembered when funding is allocated” she said.
