Author: Admin4

Volunteers Needed

The Mike Carney Toyota Paluma Push will be held on July 12 this year. Hidden Valley Cricket Grounds will be the HQ Central as well as the start and finishing points. This event has been supported by our community and the SES and RFS in the past with manning of checkpoints as well as the very important job of manning the PDCA bar at the campgrounds.

Having done both, I can highly recommend donating your time and effort to such a positive and very social event. It is worth all the laughs, joy and fun this kind of event pulls in, not to mention the dollars for our community.

If you would like to help at a checkpoint please contact Charlie Allen on 4777 5112.

If you’d like to help out at the PDCA bar, please contact Wilfred on 0447 822 626

Paluma & District Community Association Executive Meeting

The PDCA will be having its executive meeting on Saturday 28th at 5pm at the hall. All residents are welcome to attend and engage with the agenda though voting rights are for executive members only.

The meeting will start promptly at 5pm with drinks available for purchase at the bar after closure of the meeting.

Bring along some bar snacks to share if you wish.

A ‘must read’ comment on Range Road issues and TMR

This is a very informative comment posted on June 5th from one of our Paluma homeowners, Tony Bligh, which was a ‘comment’ on the post ‘2nd letter to the minister regarding range road permits’. It is very bad news indeed for our business owners in particular as well as ALL residents.

Folks the following is long because it encompasses a conversation of over an hour I had yesterday with a TMR engineer and one of the department’s communications people. They were endeavouring to explain TMR’s perspective and approach to me, and I spent my time pointing out their inconsistencies, illogicality and failings. It was polite but brutally frank. Jamie’s post brilliantly describes the failures in TMR’s thinking, so I need not go over that again.It will not surprise you to learn that TMR did not want to open the road, and had no intention of doing so. Apparently an edict from the Director-General compelled them to open it now. I was advised that that direction caused a hasty implementation and “limited consultation”. Self-evidently the implementation has been hasty and inept, so I accept that part of the advice. Long experience with TMR causes me to be very, very dubious about the claim that more time would have led to better (any!!) consultation…They appeared genuinely surprised when I told them that many Paluma home owners view our Paluma home as our “real” residence, and a Townsville house as just a place to sleep while we wait to get back up the mountain. It seems that they viewed all “weekenders” as little more than casual tourists, and could not understand the depth of outrage many of us felt at the inequitable permit arrangements.They made it clear that very large portions of the slopes above the road are unstable, and the experts believe that more slips will occur, potentially rendering the road entirely unfixable (my words, but they did not disagree).The good news – and I reiterate that this is entirely based on what they told me – is:
1. The traffic count of users of existing permits has been well within TMR’s (self-) adopted limits.
2. Consequentially, they anticipate issuing more permits “very soon”, but gave no detail about when, or how the recipients will be identified.
3. They have adopted a new process in an attempt to engage contractors to have to full rectification of the road carried out more quickly.The (very) bad news:
4. Permit arrangements are expected to remain in place until full rectification is completed. (They might allow some progressive relaxation as work is completed, but that discussion was unclear).
5. The heritage-listing of the road, coupled with the requirements of the Wet Tropics management Authority, greatly increases the cost of and time required for future works. It also (in TMR’s view) prevents TMR from improving the road and making it more resilient. (I believe that the Paluma community should discuss asap what we want to propose about at least the QLD Heritage listing).
6. TMR would not actually comment on the time required for a full re-opening, but they did not disagree with me when I said that, given the scale of the work and the impediments just described, it would be at least 12 months and probably longer.
7. They were very clear about expecting to close the road to all users during heavy rain periods, and on any other occasion they thought a slip was more likely. While they did not state the following explicitly, it seemed to me that they expect to close the road for (at least) some time during the next wet season, and during any earlier periods of serious rain. (Stock up on your provisions!).
8. The day-time travel restriction is the result of geo-technical advice that states that travel should occur only when drivers can see any slippage of the slopes above the road. That is, the restriction is not really focussing on the visibility of the actual road way. You can form your own views about any driver’s likelihood of driving the range road while also trying to look through the roof of their vehicle and around a blind corner to see the start of a landslide on a slope above the road. For myself, I reckon that if I ever see one, that will give me just enough time to kiss my butt goodbye…Good luck, Tony

Winter’s First Friday Night Social

Our first Friday Night Social for winter is on this Friday at 6pm. Maybe it’s time to bring out the fire pit. If the competition is keen the table tennis can be set up again for a few more rounds. The winner to be awarded a complimentary drink of their choice.

The bar will be open from 6pm. If you wish, bring some light nibbles and yarns to share.

Paluma and District Social Media Comms

Copyright free image sourced from unblast.com

At the recent community review meeting regarding the extreme weather event earlier this year, it was noted that access to information on what was happening during the event and the need to share information amongst residents could be improved. This article outlines the various ways in which information can currently be shared electronically across the community.
If anyone feels there are ways we can further improve sharing of information during future emergency events please feel free to share in the comments section below or contact any PDCA executive members directly.

What’s App

The WhatsApp group  – Paluma Community Alert shares urgent & ‘need to know’ information in a timely manner for Paluma and district communities. 

Typically, members post the following types of information for sharing:

  • road hazards or closures that they come across;
  • wide loads / large vehicles travelling through the area; 
  • sighting of suspicious activities in the area; 
  • stranded tourists / non-residents needing help; and  
  • planned hazard reduction burns in the area. 

Note well, the group is not about replicating information available on other official websites such as the TMR road conditions site or Qld Fire Department – Current warnings and incidents site. It is all about the important on-ground, info sharing. 

During emergency events into the future, the WhatsApp group may be used by the community to assist with any response needs.

If you are interested in joining this group, please contact Sonya Bryce on 0474 324 153 (administrator).

Facebook

Paluma/Hidden Valley News is a Facebook group “which has been created as it is a good way of finding out news and information in our area.” The administrators encourage members “to use these pages to inform, learn, locate, catch up with… Special events. Tradespeople can post; things people have for sale; lost and found (animals and other such things). Please not anything derogatory, defamatory or in any way abusive or other will be removed.”

This Facebook group has been most effective in providing information on road conditions on the Mt Fox road and the Ewan/Laroona road during and post the recent weather event.

Paluma Buy, Swap, Sell And Giveaway is a Facebook group whose primary objectives are expressed in the title. The ‘about’ description states it is “a site that may be useful to people who live in Paluma ‘village in the clouds’, away from shops and facilities.” It was also used by some for information sharing during the recent extreme weather event.

Paluma.org provides posts primarily from the PDCA on various topics directly relating to our community and allows for comments on any of these posts to be made. The usual rules for polite conduct applies to these comments. Any Paluma and District resident can also submit a post for the consideration of the editors. The current editors are Jamie Oliver, Juanita Poletto and Anneshka Brown.