The Maranoa Region

The recent floods have highlighted an interesting fact to me. It is something that I have known and suspected for some time, that is, that the footprint of the amalgamated council is disenfranchising people in smaller outlying communities.

 If you ask anyone to identify the communities within the Maranoa, most people would be able to bang off a list that contained Roma, Mitchell, Injune, Surat, Yuleba, Wallumbilla, Amby and Mungallala. But there are many more, communities such as Dunkeld, Begonia, Noonga, Bymount and some located just over our border such as the Nebine. While these communities may not have shops and post offices, they do have schools or halls or community facilities.

Such centres often form social hubs where people can go to interact with their friends, or hold their community group meetings. These centres are often used by visiting organisations such as Landcare or Agforce to hold training days. Many of them are currently being used for community recovery centres by the government after the recent floods.

Often the residents who are serviced by these communities can be forgotten in the mix when decisions are being made within the shire. The problem is exacerbated when these communities receive their mail service from towns located outside the shire.

 Let’s take, for example the community of Begonia.

 Begonia is located on the Mitchell-St George road. Its nearest town is St George from where a large number of the community receive their mail service and where a lot of people from the area go to do their shopping. I would venture to guess that the local paper of choice would be the Balonne Beacon and the radio station most often listened to would be 711AM ABC southern Queensland. Begonia has a station homestead, a school and a community hall/sports club.

 Given that their mail comes from St, George, they would receive all of the community mail from the St. George area. They would most likely even receive the Balonne shire council community information.

 So what, you say, why are you telling me all about a community Located near St. George?

 Because these people are Ratepayers in the Maranoa Shire. Their nearest council office is Roma, Surat or Mitchell, yet they are serviced by St. George. It’s worth considering this, if the council sends out a householder to the post offices in the shire, People at Begonia don’t get it. It was a long while before they even received the Bottle tree bulletin. Then it is only by direct mail.

We have all heard about how the floods have affected Roma and Mitchell. But these floods continued down the Maranoa through communities such as Dunkeld and on to Begonia. There where houses down there inundated with water, just like everywhere else. There where roads washed away down there, Just Like everywhere else and there where people isolated in their homes by floodwater, Just like everywhere else.

While the army and the SES and any number of other volunteers turned up to help us clean our houses and towns, the people of Begonia have largely been left to their own devices. Landcare and QMDC have made contact with a number of people down there to see if they are OK and have had teams of volunteers there to help them clean up. But they are still fighting a massive battle.

 They are wanting for the simplest of things, a dry pit to tip their flood damaged goods into and basic repairs to roads so they can get to town. But no-one seems to have heard their cry.

 These kinds of issues are not unique to Begonia. We have ratepayers serviced by towns outside the shire such as Morven and Bollon where the same sorts of issues arise. I suppose they are luckier than the people of the Birdsville district though. Their shire office is in Boulia. To send a postal ballot from Boulia to Birdsville it goes Boulia, Mt. Isa, Brisbane, Adelaide, Marree, Birdsville then to the property, where the box is ticked and posed back to Birdsville, Marree, Adelaide, Brisbane, Mount Isa, Boulia.  Halfway round the country and back to go a couple of hundred miles. I’ve been told this can take several weeks.

It pays to remember when we complain that we don’t know what is going on in our patch, that there are some who probably won’t even know the issue has arisen when we have already found the answer.