Should we sentence the Neil Turner Weir to death?

I think it is time for some calm in the debate surrounding the future of the Neil Turner weir at Mitchell. Recent media reports have a number of locals and politicians calling for the Weir to be dismantled, but I urge people to consider the facts before acting as Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Many old timers advised of the flow patterns of the Maranoa river when in full flood, these patterns have not changed, What they said the river did in the 1950’s is just what it did this time, and the weir did not exist in the 1950’s.The river has not run at a height exceeding 9m since 1956 and it is only the third time since 1846 that it has been above the 9m mark.

The flooding of the town of Mitchell has more to do with the volume of water in the river, rather than the presence of the Neil Turner Weir, A quick history lesson will show that.

In 1846, Major Mitchell first explored the region and found the Maranoa River, 15 years later, in 1861 Mitchell Downs station was founded. In 1864, a flood of 9.56m washed the homestead away and the owners moved to the present location of the Mitchell Downs homestead. The ruins where taken over by Mr Thomas Close and the Maranoa hotel was opened.  The town of Mitchell grew up around these establishments and grew to become the community it is today. For 148 years the town of Mitchell has existed happily on the banks of the river. On Friday, February 3rd, the Maranoa River rose to reach a peak of 9.84m, 0.28m above the previous record peak. There is not a road, building or person in Mitchell who was around to experience a flood of anywhere near this magnitude, a record that has stood for 148 years was washed away.

I would call for the operators of the Weir to undertake a review of the weir and pending that outcome, to make a decision on its future. I personally would like to see the weir desilted, rather than removed.

I would suggest that the lack of culverts under the railway line had a bigger impact on the extent of the flooding in Mitchell, rather than the Weir, Large culverts and bridges under the railway line through the town area where removed years ago and replaced by one small culvert. What the railway has done is build a levee to hold the water back onto the northern side of town.

The people of Mitchell deserve some answers and I think a detailed review of all structures on the floodplain is required, but let’s not condemn any community asset to the history books without a proper review.

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.

Let’s all help where we can!

I, like many other people have been helping out the flood victims where I can. Mucking out houses and delivering cleaning products to businesses to help kick start their cleanup has taken some of my time recently, but there is another part of helping flood victims that is a little less obvious.

A healthy and balanced community is a finely tuned thing. The simplest of things can start a chain reaction with dire consequences. We are all well aware of the many possessions that have been lost from over 300 homes in Mitchell alone and we have all heard the stories of people donating goods to the victims to help them recover what they have lost. While this is a good thing in the short term to supply items such as emergency clothing, cleaning products and foodstuffs, when it comes to refurnishing their homes, this may not necessarily be in the best interest of the community in the long term.

The businesses in our town supply the products, services, jobs and commerce that makes our town a town. These businesses are the same ones that sponsor things such as the footy team, the races, the campdraft and the show as well as many other events and activities. When donated goods come into the town from outside, this can mean that these businesses have missed out. In rewarding one part of the community, we have disadvantaged another.

Take, for example, a can of baked beans. If someone from away was to purchase a can of baked beans and donate it to someone in Mitchell, the benefits are simple, the business from away gets the money and someone from Mitchell gets the baked beans. If the person wishing to donate the beans was to buy them in Mitchell, that would provide the grocery store with a sale AND the tin of baked beans to the person who needs it.

If we where to source our donated goods here in town, we would see money going back into the local businesses who, in turn pay wages to residents in the town, by fuel for their car, employs the services of a local tradesman and so on.

Studies have shown that for every dollar brought into a community from outside is equal to $3 going around within that community. Couple to that the money spent on freighting the goods to town, and the cost increases further.

What I suppose I am saying is that while we should always be willing to donate goods to those in need, if we really want to see bang for our buck, then we would be better off donating the cash.

“Ahh” you say, “But how do I know that my money will get used to help those in need and not gobbled up in admin fees or wasted on grog and cigarettes?” the answer is in how the money is distributed.

Maranoa and Regional Support Services, Mitchell and District Landcare and the Booringa Action Group have set up the “Mitchell Community Flood Appeal” this fund will be administered by the 3 organisations and 100% of the funds raised will be distributed to the community. It is proposed to issue vouchers redeemable at local businesses and the businesses have agreed not to supply cigarettes or alcohol. Voucher holders will be able to use them in the business of their choice.

To donate to the Mitchell Community Flood Appeal, you can deposit at any branch of the NAB:
BSB: 084822
A/C: 128598929
Use your full name as the reference and email details for tax deductible receipt to... 'recovermitchell@gmail.com' or phone Sharyn at BAG on 46237814.

We should also consider, that if we are coming from outside the Mitchell community to help, we would be doing the whole community a favor if we where to buy the goods we needed here.

Flood monitoring station at Forestvale must be reinstated

Today I sent a media release to the local paper calling for the return of the automated river height recording station at Forestvale 60km North of Mitchell. Re-Automation of the river height station at Forestvale must be a priority of any incoming council.

The automated station at Forestvale was installed by the then Irrigation and Water Supply to monitor river flows to help calculate the volume of water through the river for use when designing irrigation schemes downstream. There was an extensive network of automatic monitoring sites in a number of the creeks and streams in the area. In the immediate area around Forestvale, there where three automated stations being Maranoa River at Mulkitty, Maranoa River at Forestvale and Merrivale River at Munnaweena plus a manual station at Forestvale as well. Now there are none, they have all been decommissioned or abandoned.

After the decommissioning of the Forest vale automated recording site, river height observations where conducted manually by the manager of Forestvale up until the time that the property was sold around 15 years ago. The new owner does not have a permanent manager in attendance, but a number of temporary employees who come and go as required, therefore, the local knowledge of river conditions is at risk of being lost, and the recordings are not done.

Predicting the recent record flood in Mitchell was made even more difficult by the lack of advance warning from upstream. The only recording station upstream of Mitchell is a manual station at Currawong, about 3 hours of river time upstream from Mitchell. The property owner at Currawong and his family did a mighty job in keeping everyone informed of the river conditions upstream from the town, but above them, there was nothing.

There has been talk of doing something at Forestvale for a long while, but it seems to have fallen through the cracks of the three tiers of government. Council must take a leadership role here and get this problem fixed now.

Rainy Days are good for “Office Work”

Over the last couple of Rainy days, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors. I started out the other day cleaning up my workshop, but as it had an earthen floor, sometimes it becomes quite muddy when the water runs through during heavy rain.

While my mother has been busy preparing the BAS statement, I’ve been around to answer her questions on what some invoices are for and where it should be coded. So, while I’ve confined indoors, I’ve been doing a bit of background work for my run for Council.

I’ve designed my campaign letterhead and I’m looking at quotes for corflutes as well as sorting out the back room of my FaceBook page. It now has a unique URL at www.facebook.com/kentforcouncil . It took me a long while to work out how to do that, but, now it’s full steam ahead.

I have also sent out my first media release to the local paper with the big announcement.... Look out world, here I come!

I’ve been giving some thought about this blog and how to operate it over the next little while. There is so much I want to post but, given that we are going to have a state election first, the last thing you all want is to be bombarded by council campaigning as well. I’ve decided that I’ll keep some “Semi regular” posts up until after the state election to give everyone a bit of a break. You’ll all need to keep your electoral strength up over the next 3 months!

On another note, with all this rain around, I would like to convey my support to those people who are facing what may yet be ANOTHER flood.... Hang in there people, we’re thinking of you!

Urban Development – We need to get it right

I went to Roma today to attend to some business and I ended up driving around on the north side of town. As I was driving back in along northern road, I noticed MORE new homes being built on the low lying land behind RomaVilla Winery. I commented to my friend in the car how foolish I thought it was to be continuing to build in the floodprone land along the creek after the couple of floodings it had received. He pointed out that these homes where being built on raised banks above the flood level and that what the developer had effectively done was built a levee bank altering the flow of floodwater through the town.

I made some enquiries to discover that the approval for this multi stage development was given by the former Roma Town Council prior to amalgamation and that, in spite of the fact that the community does not want it and that it would not be approved under the current planning arrangements, there is NOTHING that the current council can do about it. One must be careful what one says in public, for fear of retribution, but, to Paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. How and why this approval was granted will always remain one of life’s mysteries but Councils should NEVER approve these kinds of developments. There is no defence for this, you can’t defend the indefensible!

The decision to allow this development to proceed was disgraceful. It has placed greed before the good of the community. How is it a good thing to allow one person to profit in such a way as to inflict suffering on many others? There are times when you need to place the good of your community before the profit of individuals.

Mitchell refuse tip a load of rubbish

Anyone who has had cause to take their own rubbish to the dump will know that the state of the Mitchell Tip is a disgrace. It’s untidy, Smelly and difficult to access. But before we go crook at the council, I thought I would take the time to get some facts.

The Mitchell Tip for many years has been managed as a nice open pit into which the rubbish could be tipped and then backfilled and covered over. All that was left afterwards was a level patch of open grassland that caused no eyesore. The refuse was burned periodically to save space in the tip and extend the life of the pit. A front bund was in place to stop water from flowing in and a sump was installed to contain any water that did run in for pumping out or evaporation. All in all it was a reasonably neat and tidy place (to the extent that any dump can be)

A couple of years ago, the old tip filled up, so the council in due course set about preparing a new pit for the rubbish........ That’s when the trouble started.

As you know, the state of Queensland is governed by a bunch of people with no real practical experience who live far removed from what happens in the west in far off Brisbane. So when the application to the Department of Environment and Resource Management was received, they said that they could not justify the digging of a new pit for a town the size of Mitchell!

Pardon! Small towns aren’t allowed to have rubbish? Small towns are the ones that do NOT have access to recycling, and because of our location, everything that comes in to our town is packaged and protected for the long journey, creating even more rubbish.

I know the Council Environment and Planning department have worked hard to convince DERM that people who live in small towns DO have rubbish to throw away, but it seems that their efforts have fallen on deaf ears.

After much to-ing and fro-ing they have reached a “Compromise” You can dig down 1200mm or you can dispose of the rubbish above ground and cover it with soil. Excuse me while I swear, what clown thought that up? Instead of having a hole containing the rubbish out of the wind  that provided a level piece of ground when finished, we now have a pile of rubbish sticking up like a sore thumb blowing around the countryside and generally looking like what it is, a great big dump.

DERM need to realise that it is an unnecessary, yet significant cost placed on council and ultimately Bourne by ratepayers for the refuse to be transferred to the Roma tip.

Imagine if all the rubbish from the outlying towns was to be taken back to the Roma tip for processing? Extra Time, wear and Tear, Fuel and wages for council and extra vehicles on the road for the public.

I believe that enough is enough, The state government seem to want us to be happy to pay to freight our goods into town, and then pay to freight the rubbish away again?  It makes no sense, the biggest limiting factor to the development and progress of rural and regional towns is not the state of the economy, the geographic isolation or the impact of climate, it’s the state government and red tape.