THREE cheers for Orange MP Andrew Gee for taking up the campaign to build a direct road link between Orange and Mudgee that’s been in the too-hard basket for 70 years.
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He’s asking the state government for $20 million to get the road under way and the sale of the state’s poles and wires is an excellent opportunity to get some funding for the much-needed link.
Premier Mike Baird has ear-marked $20 billion for new rail links, roads and motorway extensions in Sydney, but we bushies deserve some of that too because an Orange-Mudgee road would boost our economy by millions of dollars.
This column has continually promoted the road because tourism would go through the roof, Mudgee people would fall over themselves to get to our shops and use our health and professional people, while we’d get a more direct route through to Newcastle and beyond.
The proposed road would cross the Macquarie River at a scenic spot called Dixons Long Point, only a hop step and 42km from Orange, and cut the distance between Orange and Mudgee by about 100km, or more than an hour.
Travellers now face a long way around, either through Bathurst and Sofala or Wellington and Gulgong, which is pretty painful.
The biggest construction problems are the steep approaches on each side of the river and a costly low-level bridge, so the road will never be built unless we get government support.
Former Orange MP Russell Turner tried his hardest, telling Parliament that councils and the wine industries dedicated the road as the Wine Highway, linking the Orange, Cowra and Mudgee wine districts.
The former Canobolas Shire Council about 25 years ago sealed sections towards the river from Mullion Creek but gave up when government development funds were refused. Cabonne sealed one kilometre and Mudgee council a 4km section on its side.
But nothing’s happened since.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
TALKING about roads, can the upgrade of a 2.4km section of the Great Western Highway at Kelso be justified?
It’s four lanes of divided road with a central concrete median strip leading into Bathurst through mainly a commercial area and costing at least a whopping $85 million.
The work includes a new bridge, three intersection upgrades, two new roundabouts and new pedestrian and cyclist access.
Bathurst’s MP is the Minister for Local Government Paul Toole, although not for a minute would you think the roadworks are a case of pork barrelling.
But surely $85 million could have been better spent fixing up roads that really need upgrading.
The proposed Orange-Mudgee road is a good example, while a few million dollars would have been welcomed by Orange City Council towards its distributor road repairs.
HERE’S a warning for pedestrians who regard speeding skateboarders as a health hazard because on the market for Christmas are new tricked-up motorised hoverboards known as two-wheeled self-balancing scooters.
Skateboarders are already a menace on shopping centre footpaths and on the way to the Anson St skateboard park, but if riders get hold of one of these hot new things we’ll all be in peril.
Even though they don’t actually hover, they work by using gyroscopes to counter-balance and control the speed of the wheels, and the more you lean, the faster you go.
They can race over any surface at up to 20km/h, so some of our rougher footpaths won’t stop them.
One model on sale here for a silvery $749 has twin electric 350-watt motors, balance detection, three gyro sensors, aluminium wheels, lithium batteries and a Bluetooth 4.0 speaker system that connects to a smartphone and blasts out music.
The hoverboards last week were banned in New York and the UK for safety reasons and yesterday Roads Minister Duncan Gay said it was illegal to use one on our roads and streets.
In the meantime keep a sharp eye out next time you’re on foot, otherwise you could be knocked flying by one of these Back to the Future II machines.
ORANGE workers ducking out for coffee are contributing to a huge loss in productivity that’s costing businesses thousands of dollars a year.
Those busybody researchers with nothing else to do say 65 per cent of office workers spend at least 10 minutes a day on each coffee break, while the average daily ritual trip to the coffee shop takes about 14 minutes.
But workers reckon the short breaks are making them more efficient while the researchers say the caffeine helps improve memory and concentration as well as reducing the number of mistakes workers make and are absolutely essential because our brains need a little rest.
It’s often in the coffee breaks when we get our creative ideas.
There’s no doubt Orange people are dependent on coffee, and they’ve got dozens of places where they can get a mug or two of moccha or cappuccino they say helps make a long working day more bearable.
So if Orange businesses want to save the time it takes their employees to walk to a coffee shop they’ll have to fork out a few dollars to buy one of those machines that can fire up their staff’s daily infusion, and then they can reap the benefits of the coffee break.
On the other side of the coin, what’s the cost to employers of workers ducking out for a fag several times a day?
A TEXAN visiting Orange boasts to his host that everything in America is bigger and better than anything in Australia.
The host takes him to look at Mount Canobolas and a kangaroo hops by.
“What the heck was that?” the Texan says.
“That,” says the host casually, “was just a grasshopper.”
ORANGE’S honeymoon with petrol prices hasn’t lasted long.
A few days ago unleaded was selling for around 115 cents a litre, the cheapest in months, but the oil companies must have thought we’d had enough relief and have now jacked up prices around 12 cents a litre.
Coles Shell is 129.9 while their unleaded E10 is 128.4.
E10 at BP Summer St is 126.9.
United in Woodward St was selling unleaded at 116.3 and 114.3 for E10 and was doing a thriving business, but yesterday put up prices to 128.7 for unleaded and 126.7 for E10.
Diesel in Orange had also been down to around 117 cents a litre but it’s now 121.9 at Coles Shell and BP.
United is again among the cheapest at 119.9.