SAVED BY ROCK
MAGNETIC ISLAND COUPLE INCHES FROM HILL PLUNGE
A MOTHER who had a brush with disaster on a major Magnetic Island road is pleading with the Townsville City Council to protect drivers.
Nelly Bay resident Nikea Mills, 26, said if not for a fortuitously placed boulder, she and husband Vincent would have plunged at least 10m down an embankment after their four- wheel- drive rolled on Horseshoe Bay Rd, on the way to Arcadia.
She’d been doing about 40km/ h on the road she had driven for nine years when her back wheels slid out on what she thought was old oil washing off in the rain back in early January.
Their four- wheel drive spun 360 degrees before doing a three- quarter roll and coming to rest smashed precariously against a boulder.
“We were very, very lucky there was a large rock which stopped us completely flipping off the hill,” Mrs Mills said.
“It’s pretty bad in general. The road hasn’t been upgraded in years and years.”
She said council regularly filled potholes on the road, but the recent rains had left it in a dire condition.
She said council had responded to emails advising action would be taken, but it would take months to investigate how best to fix the situation.
Stuck in her seatbelt hanging upside down two days out from her daughter’s first birthday, her car writ- ten off, Mrs Mills said she’d been thankful they hadn’t been seriously injured or worse.
Her parents own Road Runner Rentals NQ on Magnetic Island, a popular scooter hire business. She said they had seen plenty of scooters end up over Horseshoe Bay hill over the years and feared tragedy would strike before long if the potholes weren’t filled and guardrail extended the length of Horseshoe Bay Rd.
Local Councillor Ann- Maree Greaney said an inspector would be sent over “in the near future” to examine the road and decide what repairs it needed.
“If required, any road resealing work would likely be completed in the next financial year,” Cr Greaney said.
“Council will assess whether new guardrails are necessary. However, the work would be quite specialised because of the rocky nature of the ( local) terrain.
“An inspector has done an initial examination of the road after the recent rains and a contractor has been engaged to provide council with a quote to fix the damage identified through the inspection, with the work to be completed by the end of next month.”
Mrs Mills said she was grateful their daughter, Billie Rose, hadn’t been in the car with them when they’d gone off the road near where another four- wheel drive had crashed only three months before.
“Thank God that rock was there,” she said. “They need to put a guardrail on it.”