Faces of the Bruce Hwy

Their faces are hard to look at. They are harder to look away from. They are impossible to ignore. Today the Cairns Post, alongside The Courier-Mail and other regional Queensland mastheads, publish the names and photographs of the people who recently took their last breaths on the state’s notorious Bruce Highway.

It comes just a day after our

Help our Highway campaign revealed most of the highway between Cairns and Innisfail has a safety rating of two or three stars out of five; almost all of the road further south to Tully is rated twostars; one in three are dissatisfied or worse; and more than half of Queenslanders have witnessed an accident.

While day one exposed the inadequacies of the highway, today reinforces to both state and federal governments why the deadly stretch of road must be among their top priorities as they head towards elections in the next year.

Highway fatality data tracked during a 10-year period from 2012 shows a notorious high-risk section south of Cairns had claimed more than two dozen lives since 2012.

From January 2019 to March 2024 there have been seven fatalities in the Cairns region alone including Brendan Rigano, who was travelling south bound on January 14 when he crashed his motorbike in wet conditions near Mourilyan, 95km south of Cairns.

The 20-year-old was less than 3km from his home.

Mr Rigano was the region's latest fatality, but there are many other lives dotted with crosses similar to that on the front page of today’s Cairns Post — marking the deaths of so many lives lost, and reminding Queenslanders what they’ve known for decades; the Bruce Highway is deadly, and grossly inadequate.

If not for the poor report card, then for the faces in today’s edition and online — the federal government must commit to finishing the Bruce Highway.

Too many people have died from here to Brisbane.

This campaign will not bring them back, and will provide little comfort to their loved ones, but if it results in fixing black spots, and less deaths, then it is worth fighting for.

The Cairns Post won’t give up.