TALE OF A ‘ONCE UPON A TIME POTHOLE
Once upon a time, 14th March 2021, there was a pothole.
It lived on Araluen Road, 30.54 km from Moruya.
A neighbouring resident became concerned that said pothole could pose a risk to local traffic. It would not be a risk to anyone else because the masters at the big brick Taj in town had warned everyone else to stay away from Araluen Road.
Anyway, with the community in mind and knowing that heavy rain was forecast within the week, the resident reported the hazard to the depot where road fixers reside.
It was obvious that urgent action was required to stem the growth of the pothole
The road fixers responded quickly, arriving the following day to demarcate the hazardous area with witches hats.
Unfortunately, no action was taken to improve the drainage or to fill the pothole.
So, by the 20th March, and 120 mm of rain later, the pesky pothole had grown, reaching over half the road width.
By the 24th March and another 215 mm of rain, the pothole was transforming into a gully, while the opposite side of the road had become a very long bog hole of indeterminate depth – a trap for the unwary.
As traffic increased so did the ‘bog hole’. It got to the point where drivers were spinning their wheels sending mud flying up onto the mailbox at the property entrance.
It was at this stage, that the masters at the Taj finally gave orders for the road fixers to come out and repair the damage. However, It soon became apparent that the ‘pothole’ and the ‘bog hole’ were not the only problem.
It seems that the extended ‘pothole’ and the ‘bog hole’ had resulted in a great deal of water seeping under the road surface to turn it into a ‘pudding’ for a length of approximately 10 metres west of the property entrance.
A backhoe operator laboured throughout the day trying to reinstate a firm road surface. He dug out and then filled the road with bucket after bucket of rock fill, only to have it disappear as if feeding a bottomless pit. The Big Boss Bloke came out to have a gander but left shaking his head in bewilderment.
In the end, the fixer with the excavator had to concede that he couldn’t actually ‘fix’ it.
He reckoned that the side of the road nearest the property entrance was the most stable, so he used witches hats so as to keep traffic away from the worst of the ‘pudding’.
It was then left to restabilise itself for a period of several months.
In mid September a well instructed crew of road fixers arrived on the scene to reconstruct the damaged area.
They dug down to a depth of half a metre or more and removed a 10 metre stretch of road, filled it with coarse aggregate, covered it with geotech fabric and resheeted it with road base.
The neighbour’s entrance also underwent a makeover with the level lowered and edges scaped clear to meet the new gutter. But, it did look like the mail lady night now need a ladder to get to the mailbox.
All went quite well until 10th Dec when yet another 203 mm fell, eroding the gutter and softening the edge close to the original ‘bog hole’.
About 2 weeks before Christmas one of the neighbour’s visitors was so intent on avoiding the steepest part of the gutter on the right, that she slid into the ‘bog hole’ extension on the left, and had to be extracted.
It appears that the level of the road and driveway have been lowered resulting in the topsoil being exposed and turning to mush in the wet.
The neighbours, of course, weren’t happy and duly reported the problem to the Big Boss Bloke’s department.
Nothing happened for a while until one day a big machine passed by, had a look and a lick and then left.
So now it’s January, and the neighbours are more than a little ‘miffed’ because they can’t enter or exit in their big red truck without scraping the tow bar, let alone towing their trailer through it.
Someone from the Big Boss Bloke’s department rang last week saying that if the neighbours wanted to solve the problem, they should put in a pipe. This was not a wise suggestion as it made the steam shoot out the neighbour’s ears. Various road fixers had advised that a pipe would be installed, but the Big Boss Bloke always put the kybosh on it. The neighbour managed to calm down and explain to the caller that he did not create the problem, that council did, and that it was their job to fix it. The caller said he would go and consult some more with the boss blokes. No contact has occurred since, nor has any action taken place to resolve the problem. The property owners wonder: Should they persist pushing the Big Boss Bloke to fix the problem? or Should they just fill the gutter with rocks and gravel which would result in water being diverted across the road and impacting the surface of Araluen Road? One cannot but wonder how much has been spent on this ’Once Upon a Time Pothole’ – an analogy that can be applied to the entire length of Araluen Road in the Eurobodalla Shire. Patricia Gardiner Deua River Valley
Comentarios