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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.