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Business View Australia - January-February 2016 41
INFRASTRUCTURE
lier the municipalities of Oatlands,
Green Ponds and Northern wards of
the municipalities of Brighton and
Richmond.
The Southern Midlands Council has a
population of about 6000 persons and
its economy is rural based. The district
is steeped in history and contains a
number of Georgian farmsteads, three
jails and a number of early industrial
sites. These include timber stations,
sandstone quarries and limekilns.
There are several towns and locali-
ties within Council area with the major
ones being Oatlands, Campania, Bag-
dad and Kempton. The Midland High-
way (Heritage Highway) and the north-
south rail route bisect the municipality.
The Southern Midlands Council’s
Mayor is Tony Bisdee who was first
elected to the former Green Ponds
Council in 1972 and has been a Coun-
cillor and Mayor continuously for the
past 40 years. He was the first Mayor
of Southern Midlands Council when it
was established in 1993.
In the Annual Report for 2014-15,
Mayor Bisdee describes the role Coun-
cil plays in providing infrastructure fa-
cilities to its residents, “Council has
maintained its focus on asset renew-
al / replacement during the past year.
This included replacement of two sig-
nificant Bridges: Brown Mountain
Road Bridge and Rotherwood Road
Bridge and the commencement of oth-
er smaller bridge renewals.
“Considerable funds were expended
on re-sheeting of gravel roads and a
number of sealed road reconstruction
projects were completed …the instal-