Les is being privately cremated this Thursday 10th and A Celebration of Life Service will be held next Tuesday 15th July at Morleys Lakeside Chapel at 2.00 p.m. with refreshments to follow on site.
Hope you have plenty of volunteers for this year’s Paluma Push and that all goes well on the day. Les had so enjoyed being a part of it all for many years at Checkpoint One.
Lynn Hyland
It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Les Hyland on Wednesday, July 2nd. Les was a well-loved respected part of the Paluma Community who served in numerous roles with passion, humour and dedication. A more detailed obituary will follow, along with information about the funeral, but here are some words from Lynn regarding his last days.
Les had taken a very sudden decline in mental and physical health over the past month and had suffered a number of falls , fortunately with no serious obvious injuries. His last fall on June 24th resulted in an admission to TUH in the early hours of the morning. Each day he rapidly declined further and was finally admitted to the Palliative Ward at 4.00 a.m. yesterday Tue. 1st July. He hadn’t slept for 7 days which made matters a lot worse. He had accepted using his CPAP mask on Mon.30th and was a lot more settled but we knew by then that he wasn’t going to be coming home. At no time was he in pain or distressed. The decision was made at 2.30 p.m. to remove the mask and up his morphine levels. He was gone from us by 3.15 p.m. – very quiet and peaceful, the way he would have wanted it to be.
Lynn Hyland
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
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.
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 |
Our first working bee for winter is on this Saturday June 7th.
Meet at the hall at 2pm. Bring along some good cheer and energy and a mate.
Drinks on the verandah afterwards at 4pm.
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.