Maintaining rural roads was a major cost facing all councils said Armidale Regional Council mayor Simon Murray. It was certainly the reason why Armidale and Kempsey council representatives met with NSW Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight Melinda Pavey at Lower Creek on Wednesday.
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Most of the 64 kilometre Kempsey Road within the Armidale Local Government Area (LGA) is gravel. The road roughly follows the Macleay River to the coast, and becomes Armidale Road when it enters the Kempsey LGA, at about the halfway point.
And Cr Murray considers it as the bane of Armidale council's existence.
On a per kilometre basis, we're nearly spending twice as much on Kempsey Road as we spend on any of the other rural gravel roads.
- Cr Simon Murray
"This road goes from just past Wollomombi all the way to Kempsey. Now, prior to 2007 it was always classified as a regional road. However, during that year, the then equivalent of the RMS changed the classification of the then Armidale-Dumaresq Council side of it from a regional to a local road," Cr Murray said.
"The state government provides block grants to respective councils to maintain regional roads. As a consequence of that the Kempsey side has been maintained to a much higher level than the Armidale side."
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Cr Murray said the two councils recently made a joint submission to the Minister to advocate for the return of the entire road to a regional classification, thus making it eligible for the larger amounts of ongoing funding appropriate to that classification.
"We also need some extra major funding to fix a lot of dangerous spots along that road," Cr Murray said.
"We've got signs up advising people not to take trailers and caravans on it, but people following GPS's sometimes get to the point of no return before realising they shouldn't have brought their caravan along the road.
"We've got an area we call the "Big Hill", which is a steep descent down into the junction of the river system, and it is narrow. In a lot of areas, there is no room to pass another vehicle. When you get down to the bottom, because the road runs right beside the river you've got areas there where the road slips into the river a bit. So, it is dangerous."
Mayors and staff from both councils were able to explain the problems being experienced by both councils during their meeting with the Minister.
"Locals from Wollomombi and Lower Creek talked to Melinda and explained to her the importance of improving the road," Cr Murray said.
He said he was left feeling optimistic about the very positive meeting, which ended with lunch at Bellbrook to better give the Minister a first-hand chance to form an impression of the region involved.
