THERE has been movement on the near-forgotten Bellingen-Bowraville Rd.
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Following the acceptance by Nambucca Shire Council of $1 million seed funding from the Roads and Maritime Service earlier this year, investigations to open the road as an access trail and possible walking/cycle track have begun.
Council's engineer designer, Stephen Fowler, told the Guardian, that vegetation clearing along the road had commenced.
"So far two kilometres have been successfully cleared," Mr Fowler said.
"This will allow surveyors to get in and do a survey.
"Following that we will have a look at the individual land slips (there were 51 originally) and see what attention each one needs ... from there we can start to get indicative prices and develop a plan."
He said the council had been liaising with National Parks and Wildlife Service, Forests NSW, the Local Aboriginal Land Council and the Rural Fire Service as well as the residents of Spicketts Creek.
"Everyone is interested in having the road reopened, at least to the level of access for a Category One fire tanker.
"The RMS brief is to open the route as an 'access track' - but access 'for whom' and 'how' are still questions to be answered.
"The hope is to come up with a plan to remediate the road to keep all parties happy within the funds we are able to source ... we are making no presumptions about what the end result might be."
Spicketts Creek resident David Wallin said while he was pleased to see something happening, a single lane access track was far from adequate.
"At the moment this road is our only escape route in case of bush fires," Mr Wallin said.
"After the storms in 2009 and the closure of the road, we talked to Nambucca Shire Council about escaping from a bush fire - we were told we would need to get away early in the event of a fire.
"Last week a car ran off Bowraville Road on the bends that were repaired recently with Natural Disaster Funding. The accident occurred at about 2am and we were lucky the car did not catch fire, otherwise it would have been some time before anyone knew there was a fire - and it would have been too late to escape.
"In fact someone came back a couple of days later and torched the car ... fortunately this happened during the day and the fire brigade was called plus there had been 23mm of rain."
He said the incident highlighted the importance and urgency of getting the road re-opened properly.
"We need the Bellingen/Bowraville Road reopened to a suitable standard for normal two wheel drive vehicles," he said.
"There are several families here who do not have four wheel drive vehicles or it could happen that a family's 4WD is not at home when a fire did break out and people would need to escape in another vehicle."