A monthly update encompassing Paluma and District “news” has been published in The Rollingstone Rag for quite a long time. However in recent times, this has not been the case. Is there anyone who would like to write a brief update of the goings on of our community on a regular basis, please respond in the comments for this post and I will let Barbara Drew, the co-ordinator of the Rolly Rag editorial, know.
Barbara is also querying whether you wish to continue receiving your hard copies of the Rolly Rag as:
“…we’re trying to streamline our delivery, doing some hard copies for those that require them, whilst also providing a link to an electronic version. This is due to commence with the April edition. Do people in Paluma read the Rag and do you all want to continue getting a copy? We are happy to do whatever suits your community best. Any input from you will be greatly appreciated.”
Please respond to Barbara’s query in the comments and I will let her know what you prefer. I’ll send a response to Barbara by the end of the month.
Hard rubbish collection is for Paluma residents only.
This year, Townsville City Council will collect hard rubbish from a central location, and residents must take their rubbish to two skip bins that will be placed at the village green on Sunday 30th of this month. They are for all the hard rubbish that can not fit in your council bin. Each household is allowed 2 cubic square metres, approximately the size of 8 wheelie bins. Please check the TCC website to see what is, and is “NOT” allowed to go in these bins. The bins are very large and have walk in gates. This must be stacked correctly from the back to the gate to avoid residents having to climb over your rubbish to get theirs in. The bins will be in place for two weeks.
As this is not the usual kerb-side collection and we have to take it all to the hall, anyone with a trailer or ute and the muscles to help a neighbour out would be greatly appreciated. I will put my hand up first. I have a ute, but no muscles. I’m here most of the time, feel free to let me know if you need transport.
A big thank you to Violet for pushing the Council with me for the past three months.
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 Friday Night Social drinks for the year is on this Friday at 6pm. There will be a table tennis competition with the winner awarded a complimentary drink of their choice from the bar.
The bar will be open from 6pm. If you wish, bring some light nibbles to share.
Prior to the meetings below the PDCA will provide a BBQ lunch at noon, April 12th at the Community Hall
A community meeting to review our experiences during & after the February extreme weather event will now be held on Saturday, 12th of April, commencing at 1 pm in the Paluma Community Hall. The objective is to record lessons learnt for the future, discuss known problems & see what we can do to improve how we manage such events. All members of the community are encouraged to attend. See agenda here.
If you are unable to attend but would like to have a specific issue included for discussion, feel free to contact Charlie Allen, Peter Cooke, Anneshka Brown or Jamie Oliver to let them know.
There will also be a regular meeting of the PDCA Council at 3pm, after the community meeting. This PDCA meeting will cover various ongoing items (see agenda below). While these meetings have traditionally been considered as business meetings attended only by the elected members of the Council/Executive, we welcome any residents to attend and to raise any items that they would like the PDCA to consider in addition to what is already on the agenda. Here is the proposed agenda.
It wasn’t just the rain that came down heavily earlier this month, several local records were also knocked off their pedestals. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Peter Cooke, who braved the downpour several times during some nights in order to empty the rapidly filling rain gauge before it overflowed, we have a very good record of how much actually came down during the worst of the rains. Here’s the raw data for the month of February up til the 19th.
Here’s how many records we set …
On February 2nd we toppled the record for highest daily rainfall since records began in 1969, only to beat it again the next day with a total of 745mm.
By February 4th we exceeded the highest rainfall ever recorded in February
By February 7th we exceeded the highest recorded rainfall for any month in Paluma
While I haven’t checked if this is a new record, during the first 12 days of February we got more rain than we get during an average year in Paluma.
The heaviest period of rain lasted 4 days (Feb 1-4). Our total for this period 2004.7 mm) exceeded those in Cardwell and Ingham by a good margin.
If we are thinking that this event broke any national records then we would probably be wrong. During the rain from ex-cyclone Jasper in December 2023, Cape Tribulation recorded a maximum daily rainfall of 861.2mm and it did not receive the heaviest falls – this happened around Helensvale/Mungumby south of Cooktown, but there are no official BOM records for this location and time. Unofficial records suggest that 12-hour falls of more than 1m occurred and that 24-hour falls probably reached or exceeded 1.5m. These falls, had they been officially recorded may well have challenged global records for short-term rain events. Still, it is safe to say that we have burnished Paluma’s reputation as one of the wettest places in Australia. But don’t forget that compared to the top of Bellenden Ker, with a highest monthly and annual rain of 5.37 m and 12.46m respectively, we are barely even wet! And this is dwarfed by Mawsynram in India whose average is 11.87 m and highest annual rainfall, in 1985, was 26 meters !!
