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Business View Australia - March-April 2016 17
INFRASTRUCTURE
and the crossing opens again. The
project was called the Troy Junction
Rail Diversion and was opened by
the New South Wales Minister of
Transport in November 2015. The
reason for wanting to make the
connection more direct was because
the next closest crossing to be able
to access the North Dubbo industrial
area required a 7km deviation for
most truck traffic instead of being
able to use Boothenba Road, and it
was wasting over $1 million each year
in fuel costs and another $1 million
in lost time for transport operators.
We estimate that the environmental
and financial benefits will have paid
back the $7 million construction cost
within three years.”
Gulambula Bridge
Dubbo is a natural transport and
freight hub in the middle of NSW.
Roads radiate fromDubbo toBrisbane,
Adelaide and Perth (via broken
Hill), Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney,
Newcastle and Central Queensland
(via Walgett and/or Bourke). Even
many of our sub-arterial rural roads
are important regional routes in
their own right for people and freight
seeking to access Dubbo or bypass
the highways using lower trafficked
areas.
“One such route is theOldMendooran
Road to the northeast of Dubbo. It is
becoming quite an important link for
heavy vehicle traffic, as it provides an
alternative way for all traffic to be able
to get fromDubbo onto theMendooran
Road. This latter route goes northeast
to the town of Mendooran, but more
importantly, it links back up with the
Newell Highway near Coonabarabran.
Because it’s a bit shorter and flatter
than the Newell Highway between
Dubbo and Coonabarabran, there is
an increasing demand for its use.
Gulumbula Bridge was a Council
project completed in 2015 which
replaced a dangerous causeway
crossing on the Old Mendooran Road
over the Talbragar River. This project
cost Council $3 million. It makes the
connection for heavy vehicles, and
local residents and farmers, a lot
more attractive and efficient,” says
McLeod.
The world Gulambula is an Aboriginal
word which means earth oven. When
the designs for building the bridge
began,
Council’s
archaeological
consultants
found
numerous
Aboriginal artefacts in the ground,
including rings of stones used for
cooking fires, some of which could
be dated back 1600 years. Although
some artefacts needed to be
disturbed and removed for the bridge
construction to proceed, the local
Dubbo-ga Aboriginal community were
extremely co-operative, and Council
was very pleased to recognise the
existence of these important artefacts
in perpetuity by naming the bridge the
Gulambula Bridge.