STANDING on the side of the Pacific Highway at Urunga a few years back, Dr Ray Jones welcomed the announced redevelopment of the road, and lamented that the only certainty was that more people would die on the stretch between there and Nambucca before the project was finished.
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Dr Jones, who had seen first hand the physical carnage and emotional heartache of the Cowper bus crash in 1989, was speaking at a protest rally to ‘fix the road’ attended by hundreds of residents.
Among those gathered were dozens from Nambucca Shire, including the then and now mayor, Rhonda Hoban, and speakers included people from as far afield as Eungai.
The stories of loss were as pronounced as they were moving.
The rally came in the wake of a death of an 11-year-old Penrith boy, killed in his sleep when a truck crashed into a home at Urunga.
It was a tragedy that such a tragedy seemed to accelerate the political process to prioritise redevelopment of the Pacific Highway through our district.
This week came news that full duplication of the Pacific Highway from Hexham through to the Queensland border is on track for completion by the end of the decade.
That is to be welcomed, and the politics of which party did what is of little matter.
It’s also to be celebrated that the Nambucca to Urunga section is also said to be ahead of schedule, anecdotally by as much as six months, with the new road set to open to traffic next year.
For all that, profound regrets remain.
It is to our shame that it has taken so long to build a safer Pacific Highway. And it is a dreadful pity that Dr Jones haunting prediction of further loss of life would prove true.
