Business Feature
The Blackall-Tambo Regional Council (BTRC) is off to a flying start this year with several exciting council projects nearing completion or in the pipeline that will provide economic and quality of life benefits to all that live in the region.
Mayor Andrew Martin said his priority issue is to improve the communication problems that have been plaguing the region.
“We have extraordinarily bad communications in Blackall, our internet connection reliability and speed is terrible. The launch of the Skymuster and Bigpond satellites have both been great disappointments for us.
“People can’t even pay bills via BPAY because their connections time out, and our children can’t get proper education remotely for the same reason.
“We have a highly successful saleyards here, and to keep up with the times we should be holding live online interactive sales, but we don’t have the bandwith to do it, it’s very frustrating.
He said council is looking at innovative ways of providing internet speeds, bandwith and reliability equal to what inner-city residents enjoy.
“Their are a heap of things we can do, we’re investigating point-to-point coverage and increased ADSL access as possible solutions.
“Agriculture is our primary business in this region, and if we can’t get equal footing on internet access we can’t win the race, if we can’t get up to speed we’ll be a ghost town in 10 years.”
He said the goal will be for the ratepayer living at the furthermost point of the region to have the same communications quality as a person living in town.
BTRC CEO Chris Blanch said work is now underway to upgrade facilities at the Blackall Saleyards.
“Council is planning to upgrade the facility over the 12 months. We’re keen to promote the saleyards as being a geographically well located facility with well run amenities for people wanting to process stock,” Mr Blanch said.
He said new amenities to be constructed will include toilets, a canteen and a new viewing platform so visitors can get a good look at the sale action.
“We’ll also be expanding the number of pens which will allow for a significant increase in the volume of cattle the saleyards can handle, and we’re upgrading and modernising the scale facilities to improve productivity.”
The project will also see the sheep yards restored and renovated.
“With the resurrection of sheep industry in the Central West and South West, we’re upgrading the yards to provide a more viable option for graziers in the region to take advantage of.”
Mr Blanch said to help with the mobile communications problems those in the town contend with on a daily basis, council is looking to go back to the future and bring back the UHF network.
“Hopefully bringing the network back online – which we’re aiming to do before the end of 2017 – will help with mobile coverage, improve the safety of our rate payers and make life a bit easier in general.”
He said there is no mobile coverage at all in the remoter areas of the town, and council feels standard UHF has a part to play in improving communications.
“We have towers dotted across the region so we can link it fairly easily; it might look like we’re moving backwards, but its reliable and can be used for other things like internet coverage, emergency services access and even radio/television coverage could be improved.
An idea on the drawing board that has the potential to provide significant economic benefits for businesses in the region is the Barcoo River Tourism project which councillor Ben Holcroft said will build a tourism brand that enables council to market some of the great products captured in the Barcoo River region.
He said while the project is still in the early stages, good progress is being made and discussions are being held in association with the Longreach and Barcoo councils and various community groups about how they can encourage more people from outside the area to visit and spend their money in the region.
“Once we have the basics in place we’ll look to implement a digital marketing strategy to encourage interstate and intrastate visitors. It’ll be an ongoing project, which council hopes will be a catalyst for infrastructure and facility improvements,” Cr Holcroft said.
The Barcoo River Tourism project working group will be holding their next meeting from 11am on Friday, April 21 at Yaraka, with all members of the community invited to attend.
To get in touch with the Blackall-Tambo Regional Council please phone (07) 4621 6600 or visit the website.
