My wife and I assisted about six months ago at a head-on collision on the sealed section of the Plomer Rd adjacent to the Goolawah Camp ground. The drivers were a local resident and a tourist. It was clearly the tourist’s fault.

We have also experienced numerous near-misses with drivers driving too fast on the sealed sections of road.

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During the last holidays, police radar booked numerous cars at Racecourse headland for speeding – another sealed section of the road.

Secondly: “We were all amazed by the dust we witnessed be(ing) brought up by the vehicles travelling on the road,” Cr Saul said.

The single and main reason there was an inordinate amount of dust when the councillors’ bus trip occurred was that the road had been given a quick grade only five days earlier. The road surface was loose and dangerous given the high frequency of holiday traffic so close to the road being graded; the road had not had time to consolidate.

This last point leads me to once again urge the council to grade the road immediately after each holiday period and not before holidays. Consider this: the road was graded immediately prior to the last holiday period. The hard skin that had formed over the months prior to this grading was destroyed by the grading.

The newly formed, unconsolidated, surface was then immediately subjected to a high frequency of holiday traffic use. The result: the road was in worse condition less than two weeks after the grading than it was in the four weeks preceding the grading. Not really rocket science, guys!

This adherence to post-holiday grading would also address some of the concerns of the resident whose property is covered in dust, with whom I sympathise, but must add the rejoinder, “caveat emptor”.

The council’s decision to proceed to apply for funding to seal the road is a sad step sideways into the mainstream, not forward, for our shire. We have one of the last rustic strips of coastline in NSW which is a tourism goldmine. Sadly, council has sentenced it to extinction.

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