A Yerong Creek family is housebound after Lockhart council botched “scheduled maintenance” on a sodden road late last week.
Residents were stunned when council staff attempted to grade an unsealed road late last week, given the region has endured the wettest ever September and a record wet winter.
Kilbrae Road resident Yoshi Todori received a call from council on Thursday asking him to ride a motorbike home from work, as a car would not negotiate the torn-up surface.
Mr Todori’s wife and three young children had to be ferried on a quad bike through a neighbour’s paddock after returning home from shopping in Wagga.
The feedlot worker then had to make several trips to and from his wife’s car to collect the groceries.
“The road looks like a bomb went off,” Mr Todori said. “I haven’t had road access to my house for three days, not since council tried to resurface the road and all their heavy machinery got bogged. We haven’t been able to get out of the house all weekend; my wife and children are stuck indoors.”
Mr Todori “could understand the stuff-up” but was outraged council didn’t work over the weekend to fix their mess.
“To be honest (Lockhart) council clearly hasn’t got much common sense,” he said. “They should have waited a month for the road to dry out, but instead they’ve turned a job that should have cost a couple of grand into tens of thousands of dollars.”
Lockhart council environmental services manager Alan Gundrill said council staff for two days in an attempt to provide residents access, including "staying back late on Thursday”.
“Unfortunately, due to extreme wet conditions on the site – because it is so wet – we can only get the road up to a certain standard,” Mr Gundrill said.
Lockhart mayor Rodger Shirmer said the state of the road was “not great, but it’s the best they can do in the circumstances”.
Yerong Creek farmer Geoff Murphy accused council management of needlessly restricting his trade
“They started work on Wednesday morning after half an inch of rain on Tuesday night,” Mr Murphy said. “They’ve assured me I can get a B-double with two decks of cattle through, but council’s own three-tonne truck sank into the road and bellied out.
“How long is this going to last for?”
