It is no surprise that travel is always vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature. Whether fire, flood, snow, strong wind, or even a bright sunny day, we make it from A to B dependent on conditions outside our control.
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However, here on the Far South Coast we are more exposed than most to the vagaries of weather extremes on our transport corridors. It only take the cutting of a main road through fire, flood or a fallen tree to render the Bega Valley unreachable to many.
Take the recent bushfire crisis for example. Having the Princes Hwy closed for weeks at a time both south and north of the shire limits put a severe dampener on our tourist trade as well as hampered local business. Couple that with several of the east-west mountain roads also being cut and routes in and out of our patch become severely limited.
While the nature of "unprecedented" events mean just that - they are beyond anything expected (regardless of your views on the use of the word itself...) - surely it's time to be looking at future options for transport routes for our region.
We've long campaigned for safety upgrades to the Princes Hwy, including safety barriers and extending the dual carriageway through to the Victorian border.
We also believe more effort should be spent investigating our east-west corridors - the Snowy Mountains Hwy at Brown Mountain, Mt Darragh and Mt Imlay Roads.
Thank goodness no-one was anywhere near those boulders when they fell on to the roadway on Brown Mountain at the weekend. And thankfully the demolition and removal of them was swift - well done to all involved there!
But it proves our vulnerability when a rock fall, coupled with Mt Darragh remaining closed due to bushfire damage, suddenly means weekend traffic to Canberra has a couple of extra hours added to their journey, possibly via rather less satisfactory road conditions on Mt Imlay.
Or cast your mind back to 2016 when one lane collapsed on a section of the mountain road following heavy rain. Or prior to that, in 2012, when there was significant disintegration of the roadway, again following heavy rain, which saw the route closed to all traffic for more than a month.
We don't have the answers to Brown Mountain. It may be that there are no answers and we continue on the same path we're already travelling, clearing up messes after they happen.