Mayor's Column - Longreach Leader 17 December 2021
This column first appeared in the Longreach Leader on Friday 17 December 2021.
Hello again for my last column of the year. We had our final Council Meeting for the year in Isisford last week, and what a year it’s been:
We won Gold at the Queensland Tourism Awards in the Visitor Services category. The Thomson River Master Plan was adopted and is underway. We secured funding for a major expansion of the Longreach Childcare Centre in the New Year. We delivered a $1m shade structure for our multi-purpose netball courts. We completed a major refurbishment of the Outer Barcoo Interpretation Centre in Isisford, and we also constructed a new state-of-the-art amenities block in the main street there. Our $1.4m Isisford Weir repairs are fully funded and underway.
We’ve completed a major upgrade of the Longreach Aquatic Centre. We hosted regional visits from the Prime Minister, the Board and Executive Management Group of Qantas, and the Tourism & Events Queensland, and Outback Queensland Tourism Boards. We hosted the Premier and her Ministers for a Community Cabinet meeting in Longreach. We constructed a new pedestrian walkway at Longreach Airport. We won an LGMS Risk management award for our COVID response, and we completed upgrades to the Machinery Mile at Ilfracombe.
I could go on, but suffice to say it has been another busy and successful year for your Council. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow Councillors, and the team of diligent and hard working staff that make all of these achievements possible. I look forward to another successful year ahead.
In other news, we hosted an open day with our partners at Western Queensland Livestock Exchange (WQLX) recently. We’ve partnered with AAM Investment Group (AAMIG) to make some exciting improvements at the Longreach Saleyards and Spelling Facility, better known as WQLX.
Our Rural Lands and Pest Management Advisory Committee joined members of the public and industry representatives to tour the new features. Everyone was impressed by the new full-deck weighbridge, new spelling area shade structures, and the designs for the new fully covered selling ring.
Visitors were most impressed though by the new seven-way single-weigh drafting facility. The innovative facility is available for hire to local producers at per-head rates, but as one producer remarked on the day: ‘You won’t want to go home’! It’s going to be a very exciting year ahead for WQLX, with the new selling ring starting construction soon and scheduled to be up and running sometime after April.
A big thanks to everyone who gives their time to make the many Christmas events happen in our communities. Council has launched an events calendar on its website to help keep track of all the different events happening in our region – and there are plenty of them. The community can even submit an event to the calendar themselves using our online form. We’re hoping this will become the central reference for what’s happening around our region, and you can find the calendar by visiting longreach.qld.gov.au/whats-on.
Most Council offices and libraries will close today and re-open on 4 January. If you have some last minute business, our Longreach head office will be open next week for limited hours (8:30am – 3pm) up to and including Wednesday 23 December. While the office is closed, you’ll still be able to call our answering service 24-hours-a-day on (07) 4658 4111, and they can alert the on-call staff if necessary.
I’ll be back with another column next year. Until then, you can find email and direct phone numbers and email addresses for me and for each of my fellow Councillors on our website at longreach.qld.gov.au/elected-members. If you want to know anything at all, reach out to one of us - or contact Council directly on (07) 4658 4111 (24hrs), or email assist@longreach.qld.gov.au.