Cr Column Councillor Max Musumeci

Last Wednesday I chaired the Road Safety meeting. This is where Police, Fire, Ambulance, Wilmar, Main Roads, and Council, get together to discuss local traffic and road issues that have been raised by residents and businesses. The solutions are not always easy, but the discussions are always productive. You can find the minutes of these meetings on the council website.

Unfortunately, a lot of our traffic issues stem back to driver error and impatience. One example that has been raised from Queensland Ambulance is indicating on roundabouts. Often the Ambulance are on a lifesaving mission and get to a roundabout to meet cars that aren’t indicating their intentions. Please be mindful of this going forward. It could save a life.

I’d like to take this opportunity to give a personal thanks to all the Burdekin residents for their efforts, patience and resilience through the recent weather events. It was pleasing to see when I attended the Home Hill SES sand bag site to help fill sand bags, that people were pitching in to help one another and also terrific to hear a bit of banter and general chit chat to show spirits were good. I’d like to give a special thanks and sincere gratitude to Jess and the team at iComply, who with one phone call, came to the town’s aid to provide a bus and driver to help ferry people back and forth to the rail motor. We learned a lot through this process and whilst I hope we never need it again, we will be better prepared with systems in place in the future.

Finally, it is planting weather. Farmers are working up the dirt and banging in all the fresh produce they can, and I’ll bet we see the cane starting to go in this week. Hard to believe only a couple of weeks ago we were in monsoon conditions. Let’s hope for the best weather going forward so everyone can have a productive and profitable year.

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