Rough as.......

Extracted from the Farm Tender weekly Newsletter - Sign up and get the email every Wednesday morning before 5 am. www.farmtender.com.au

By Dwain Duxson.

Firstly, if you haven't seen it yet, we have a Toyota Hilux beaut Ute giveaway going on. More details here.

Paula and I travelled the length of Newell highway the other day from Tocumwal in the South to Boggabilla in the North. According to Google, that's 1062km.

And to best describe the state of the highway, I only need two words. Rough as....

Having travelled up and down the highway on many occasions over the years, I would have to say it's the worst I have ever seen it.

We have real problems with our roads, and no one state is any better off than the other. Collectively our roads are very tired and falling apart.
And the worst thing is, they ain't going to get any better.

The organisations that look after these roads can only really do patch-up jobs and only a very short-term fix. New problems emerge where old problems have been patched, sometimes within weeks.

Some of the newer patches of road on the Newell would be around 5 to 8 years old, and they are starting to have to be repaired.

At one point on a very clear and sunny winter's day, I had to remove my sunglasses so that I could get a sharper view of what was in front of me. It was a case of dodging the potholes, which can be a dangerous sport in itself, but hitting the deep ones can run the risk of doing some damage to the vehicle.

Whilst up North, I travelled up and down the Pacific freeway a couple of times from the Queensland border down. It was a pleasure to drive on.

Why was it so good when others are failing? Because it was built out of concrete and not bitumen. The road had no patch-up jobs and looked like it was low or even maintenance-free, and my guessing areas would be 30 years old.

So the lesson for me is, if you're going to build a road, you need to do it properly right from the word go.

My guessing is that concrete roads cost more to build than bitumen roads. Hence why most of the roads are bitumen. But would a cost analysis reveal that concrete roads work out cheaper in the long run (say 30 years) because the repair bill is minimal? And to add to the fact that they are still in good condition when a bitumen one needs to be replaced.

I have driven around the US a bit, and they use concrete on their main roads, and they are magnificent.

There's gotta be a change in policy. As we see more Cars and many more Trucks on the road, our roads just won't cope. They aren't now.

I feel like I am picking on the Newell highway here, and I shouldn't because many of the other roads I went on were just as bad and some even worse.

It affects us in Agriculture. We are rurally based and are the most significant users of the roads we are talking about.

If you're a truckie or a frequent user of these roads, it must get to you after a while, and some of the situations that present are darn right dangerous. Having drivers deliberately dodging potholes can only increase the risk, but it's inevitable, and I found I was doing it myself.

I don't know what the answer is. Well, I do, build better (concrete) roads. But currently, the rate of fixing is not catching up to the rate of decline. It could be said that we have a road crisis.

Stay safe out there....

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