Bob Katter, MHR and new highway designer, Ron Reddicliffe, discuss the poor structural problems of the 60 year-old Barron River Bridge at Kuranda
Local News
Mareeba Shire Council made a serious error of judgement when choosing the options to repair or replace the ailing Barron River Bridge on the Kennedy Highway, the only viable, existing corridor between Mareeba and Cairns.
The Main Roads on behalf of Labor Transport Minister Mark Bailey recently offered a pre-election sweetener to Atherton Tablelands motorists asking them to choose between a patched-up Barron River bridge or a new bridge near the existing structure.
Unfortunately, Mareeba council, according to local media reports, fell for Labor’s rhetoric and opted for a new bridge, at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion which bankrupt Queensland Labor has no intention of building.
Mareeba Mayor Angela Toppin after many years in the public service should have seen through the Labor election scam and insisted on a new corridor bypassing the treacherous Kuranda Range Road altogether.
Labor hopes the bridge option tossed around among the public should take the heat off TMR and Mr Bailey as hundreds of motorists complain about almost daily closures of the notorious range road due to road accidents or irrelevant, newly-installed under-road cabling and provision of even more cameras to have alternating road speeds when the road is busy.
Accidents still occur and hapless motorists still drive over the edge as soon as it rains holding up traffic for up to five or six hours, never mind the safety of drivers.
Full diesel tanks on trucks, start spilling out of the over flow when heading up the steep hill and every hair-pin corner splashes a bit more diesel onto the road surface topping up the oily sheen on the bitumen.
Then a few showers replicate Townsville’s Warrina Ice Skating rink except the skaters on the Kuranda road are cars, buses or trucks.
Suffering drivers held up on the range have the option of backtracking, if they can get out of the traffic snarl, then drive to Mossman to take on the Rex Range eventually getting to Mareeba, a costly detour of one and a half hours.
Or they can head south through Cairns for the equally deadly Gillies Range Road and possibly suffer a similar fate they faced on the Kuranda road and nearly two hours extra driving with an over-load of government fuel taxes blowing the week’s budget.
Many motorists trying to meet deadlines for air travel or doctor’s appointments in Cairns leave the day before choosing to book a motel or stay with friends rather than play Russian roulette with the range.
TMR and Minister Bailey have had the option of a viable alternative route for at least three years, that requires no river crossings, allows B-Double access and would cut 20 minutes travel time from the existing Kennedy highway driving time to Cairns.
Cost savings of the proposed Reddicliffe highway according to a report compiled by Cairns economist Bill Cummings would save the Tablelands $1.2 billion a year, ironically much more than enough to build the new highway at an estimated cost of $700m.
Instead wall-to-wall, bankrupt Labor has ensured that no new road will be constructed if they have anything to do with it.
The lion’s share of government income for the next 8 years has been committed to an Olympic Games extravaganza in Brisbane, of which the Premier has appointed herself as chief honcho until the games are over. A paid position of course.
Yet another Ministerial escape route has been created with TMR now claiming in correspondence to a Mareeba community group they will spend ‘$262.5m for safety and resilience upgrades on the narrow, winding and steep Kuranda Range Road’.
The letter said TMR is ‘working with the Australian Government to develop an appropriate scope of works and delivery timeframe for the upgrades’.
Few believe TMR has any intention of safety upgrades after spending a reported $30m on a convoluted system of smoke and mirrors and under-road, camera cabling along the narrow track trying to slow down the 10,000 vehicles using the road every day.
From where the stated $235.5m will come from is anyone’s guess and it certainly won’t be spent before the next state election due in October 2024.
The TMR said in the letter they had a report done by a Cairns consultant 18 months ago which claimed the road could handle existing and projected traffic flows until 2050.
Naturally the report was received by local governments and motorists with a great deal of mirth then derision.
The letter omitted to say the Minister could have pre-empted the report’s findings as a condition when he contracted the consultant to write it.
Engineers have said the traffic study report was so erroneous the only way in which the consultant could have reached the conclusion that the Kuranda Range Road was under capacity was to have been paid to state it.
TMR wrote in their letter quoting the study: ‘While there are clear challenges with the routes between the coast and northern tablelands, none of the existing corridors are operating at capacity.’
As a Cairns truck driver put it, “The government should learn you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”. From CN Tablelands correspondent.
It’s been a long time since I went to Kuranda but I would say technology will change the face of the road problem before anything else happens, thinking of self-piloting electric cars being pushed on the public and petrol stations slowly disappearing as the price goes up.
But the suffering motorists are stuck with the outdated Kuranda Range Road. A new route seems the most practical. Ed
Katters Australian Party Shane Knuth is the only representative who has ever mentioned the inaccuracy and unlawfulness of speed cameras in parliament (last week). With the blessing of Bob Katter. Editor
I beg to differ with you, Ed.
Where it exits is a moot point, it runs down the same valley as Freshwater Creek.
And, yes, I looked at the detailed maps of the proposal back when it was first proposed.
Three years ago he stopped the Chinese from buying the former Pajinka resort site at the Tip of Cape York. Then a few years before single-handedly restored the Indonesian live cattle exports that Northern Australia so desperately needs to keep the cattle industry alive. NT producers are on their knees right now as Indonesia temporarily halted imports of Australian cattle due to a lumpy skin scare. These are just two recent examples of Bob’s temerity and rejection of the duopoly. There are many others. Editor
It should be noted that Katter has not advocated for any new road in this story. He is merely looking at the failing bridge structure. The Reddicliffe hwy proposal exits on Reservoir Rd, next to Boral Quarry nowhere near Crystal Cascades. It exits through a 200 acre block owned by state government. Editor
re: the bridge, not so hard to do a bridge, except the admin burden weighs more than the actual bridge.
re: ALP terminal cancer, I am guessing a dog could smell it a block away, hopefully it’s incurable
A few skeptical comments directed at Bob Katter here on the forum, folks.
FWIW, IMO Bob Katter is one of only a handful of politicians worthy of the role here in Australia, one who has fiercely fought for his constitutents for decades.
Whenever Bob has something to say, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. Recall that Bob LEFT the National Party because he got fed up with their ignoring the needs of rural Australians (and NOT becuase he was denied pre-selection, like certain other pollies mentioned in Cairns News articles).
Many is the time that Bob Katter has stood up and voiced truth bomb after truth bomb in Parliament House in Canberra, only to have the treasonous sold-out Globalist sycophants laugh in his face.
True, precious little has been accomplished to turn back the Globalist tide in our rotten-to-the-core fake corporate “governments”, but at least those on our side have done their best to throw the occasional spanner in the works from the INSIDE.
If we want to do a better job, then that will require cleaning the entire putrid edifice out from top to bottom, hanging a shitload of traitors and starting over from scratch.
The big problems with Ron Reddicliffe’s proposal is that the valley he wants to come down is the one that’s home to Crystal Cascades, a beautiful and very popular set of swimming holes on Freshwater Creek that would be fiercely defended by locals of all political stripes.
Ron’s proposal is also a four-lane road, which would create massive scarring and sediment flows not only in the Freshwater Creek valley but also across the scenic backdrop behind Redlynch. It would also face the immense geotechnical problems of trying to cut a wide bench into ancient, rotten, and very hygroscopic soil and rock types. It would have a serious landslip risk.
I’ve campaigned on a new road on a new route since the 1999 round of consultations and I proposed a surface road on the power line clearing from Davies Creek to meet up with the Lake Morris Road corridor. I gave up on that idea about five years later due to the increasingly feral nature of the Greens.
BobKat sometimes talks about the Bridle Creek Track route, which was a small part of my 1999 proposal – the poor old bloke has trouble keeping the details straight.
My current plan, that I’ve lobbied on in the corrupt corporate media and on two election campaign trails, provides a new all-weather freight-friendly range crossing that doubles as a tsunami evacuation route for Cairns residents. Best of all, it pays for itself and won’t need a toll.
Here’s how it works.
From the Davies Creek turnoff on the Kennedy Highway east of Mareeba a seven-kilometre surface road crosses the first of the four ridges then becomes a seventeen-kilometre gently-sloped tunnel which glides under the next three ridges, under the UN-controlled bush, and under the southern suburbs, to surface next to Ray Jones Drive near Links Road.
The tunnel spoil is combined with dredge spoil from a 15-metre shipping channel dredging upgrade to bund and cap four square kilometres of East Trinity’s salt-flat wastelands.
That new near-CBD land is sold to pay for the tunnel, the dredging, the reclamation, and for two bridges to link it to Ray Jones Drive.
Mangrove habitat lost near Ray Jones Drive is replaced at Admiralty Island with some new channels, and the liquid fuel storage can be moved out of the CBD to Admiralty Island.
The whole project can be completed without disrupting existing traffic and the benefits to Cairns and the Tablelands, Gulf and Peninsula will be enormous. The ALP-LNP twins don’t want it because there’s too few opportunities to enrich their mates and channel money back to themselves, plus they didn’t think of it – a conservative did.
More than you can imagine. Ed
Bob Katter at least told us years ago the reef bleaching was caused by runoff and not by ClimateChange™ formerly known as GlobalWarming™ formerly known as GreenhousEffect™, but now the crooked ALP has perverted this information into some type of farm seizing opportunism. The ALP always had a rotten core I guess but now the entire thing is rotten and it also has cancer possibly terminal we hope spreading out from the Home Affairs Dept.
Frank
The UN plan for the West is that our economies & social structures be made dysfunctional. Politicians are playing their allocated role in the implosion, whether they know it or not. Sad so few of the public cannot see it for what it is.
Amen Frank.
I’ve been shouting that same message from the roof tops, albeit to deaf ears for many years now.
Good to see there are at least a handful of us who see the MAMMOTH in the room.
The plan is to collapse Oz in the near term. Any of these illogical proposals are a time-fillers until 2025-2030, a pretense of progress. The UN plan for the West is that our economies & social structures be made dysfunctional. Politicians are playing their allocated role in the implosion, whether they know it or not. Sad so few of the public cannot see it for what it is. I have a dream, but first there is a shambles.
Robert Bellarmine Carl Katter (born 22 May 1945) wikipedia page is an interesting read (and yes I aware it can be total BS) however, it states he sometimes identifies as first nations, also apparently has lebanese heritage. His family history is politicians. I know nothing of this issue but I guessing Bob wearing a watch on his right side (who is not left handed but potentially “limp wristed” is not on your side). I do believe he has been a member of Parliament for 30 years. What has he achieved for you Queenslanders?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Katter
Is Bob Katter a parasite who has done nothing.
Lets list his achievements.
1. ?
Who were the elected representatives who could have prevented those cameras being installed? Such a waste.
And who are the bureaucrats who sit around in offices planning to install cameras just to annoy people?
I know all the Range roads personally since 1989 so I can speak as a professional driver of heavy transport to say that the Redlynch Valley proposal is by far the best option to move anything to and from the tablelands leaving the existing Range roads to tourist and local traffic .
I could fix the Barron River bridge quite cheaply by installing a jack up system of steel frames currently used for tower cranes used on high rise building sites to take the weight of the deck until the concrete pillars can be replaced with wider stronger pillars to support the bridge or just leave them there
Folks, NONE of the fake corporate State, Territory or Federal “governments” here in Australia have any obligation to give a flying rat’s arse about what ANY of the Australian people in any State or Territory might want.
That’s because they DO NOT WORK FOR US, they are REGISTERED CORPORATIONS which are working for FOREIGN SHAREHOLDERS. And those foreign shareholders happen to be genocidal Luciferian Globalists who want us ALL DEAD.
Each day when you wake up from counting sheep (remember to add +1), make sure to REMIND yourself of that FACT, and KEEP reminding yourself until it SINKS IN. This is our REALITY, folks, and we’re living in it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, FOREVER.
Here’s someone who’s already done the WORK that most of us are just too fat, dumb and lackadaisical to do ourselves…
au/corporate-government-abn-numbers/
(stick “cirnow.” followed by “com.” at the front)
It’s IN OUR FACE in BLACK and WHITE. Seriously, folks, FFS WAKE UP!
P.S. See how “easy” it is to communicate web links on WordPress? If you are reading this, it’s the THIRD iteration. WordPress ATE the first two.
Government has invented itself as a huge parasitic organism that thrives on kickbacks of every type and endless growth. There is no use appealing to reason, in terms of infrastructure, services etc. Only one such appeal can work, the very rare threat of imprisonment or similar rough justice. Government wants more and more cameras to try to catch citizens’ trivial misdemeanours so as to pinch their money, but they cannot catch themselves, as they do “favours” all over the place in return for campaign donations and career upgrades. Government is a front for all the mafias you can think of, including the real mafia. The reason why the things they do and don’t do make no sense is because YOU are not part of any mafia that is on the receiving end of the deal. THEY are the parasite and YOU are the host, they want your money and property so bad they are actually trying in many ways to stupefy then kill you, if you don’t believe me go and get your booster.