The results? Hundreds of hectares of native bush and wildlife burned; the enormous monetary cost of all the resources used to fight the fire, including helicopters and planes; residents and weekend visitors lined up for hours trying to get to Callala Beach; smoke inundation and people with respiratory problems having to leave, and the uncertainty and fear that grips people during such traumatic and dangerous events.

Something must be done to ensure that these 'controlled burns' do not become uncontrolled. We need an inquiry to find out what is going wrong within the RFS and how we can fix it. And the RFS should be made to follow its own rules, ie NO hazard reduction burns during the bushfire danger period. That means none whatsoever.

On behalf of the Leukaemia Foundation, I would like to thank those who held a lantern and gave generously at the Berry Light the Night on Friday, October 7.

Thanks to all those who participated by walking or donating, we are on our way to reaching our goal of $2 million to provide those diagnosed and their families with practical support. Funds will also be invested in the country’s leading research programs.

The Leukaemia Foundation is dedicated to supporting the 60,000 Australians currently living with leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma and related blood disorders, as well as their families. The Foundation is proud to be able to support locals in the Shoalhaven region, which Berry Light the Night help fund.

On behalf of all those diagnosed and their loved ones, I would like to acknowledge the generosity of the community.

Good to hear that council and our local member are pressing for federal funds for the new bridge and highway from Berry and are considering a petition. Good news that the RMS website has given us an update on the new bridge in the last week. The location has been determined (last year) and new bridge design and preliminary investigations for new intersections at Bolong Road, Illaroo Road and Bridge Road-Pleasant Way are under way. The old bridge is not to be included in “the functional road network”.

This matter is now urgent. As holiday traffic increases our town is becoming choked and local traffic obstructed. The new bridge is arguably more important than the new highway which will merely move the traffic jam from Berry to the Shoalhaven River. The traffic interchanges at each end of the new bridge are as important as the bridge itself for local and through traffic and they will become major construction projects that will need to be built at the same time as the new bridge.

These interchanges will have serious impacts on the land and buildings at each end as they will be intrusive. Council needs urban design influence here so as to preserve public space, pedestrian access, river edge business and to make provision for our annual river festival.

We trust that RMS monitoring will prevent a rogue truck and its over-height content from destroying the overhead truss structure of our old bridge. The record on Sydney tunnels and overhead bridges is not comforting here. Without replacement planning and funding in readiness, this destructive event would be an enduring disaster of major proportions for the South Coast, local business and local tourism. 

State and federal governments as well as Shoalhaven Council need to co-operate here. This is vital stuff for hundreds of thousands of electors.