WATER IS KING IN TABLELAND
FOLK singer Arlo Guthrie sang the celebrated lyrics “you can get anything you want from Alice’s Restaurant”.
Garry and Maude Christopher’s Yungaburra Pit Stop roadhouse is the North Queensland version of Alice’s Restaurant. At the vintage 1960s Pit Stop, you can buy fuel, pizza, hire a boat or canoe, rent a trailer, buy a second- hand car, get your vehicle serviced, buy some bait and even do your washing.
Or you can buy a meal and take home some fresh Tableland spuds and pumpkins. Garry’s thoughts on politics and the state of the nation are “on the house”.
At the Pit Stop, the only thing you can’t get is a guarantee that the state is in safe political hands.
And there is no guarantee that will change, even closes on Saturday.
Garry, a former Torres Strait cray fisherman, says he can’t believe the level of government mismanagement at the state and federal level.
He sees a state blessed with natural resources such as coal and sunshine that is burdened with electricity prices that are sending businesses broke and pushing families to the edge of the financial precipice.
He says politicians promise to fix things if they are elected, but nothing ever happens.
Like nearly everyone on the Tableland that sits inside the new electorate of Hill, he is vocal about water and the precarious supply in Lake Tinaroo reservoir.
He supports a plan being promoted by the LNP to fund a $ 1 million study into the feasibility of diverting water from the North Johnstone into the Barron River catchment feeding into the Tinaroo Dam. after polling
He said the dam was important for farming and domestic use, but added businesses in the region were now heavily geared to servicing the tourists who travelled to the Tableland to enjoy Tinaroo’s recreational options.
“If the dam goes dry that’s the end of the Tableland. If whoever is elected to Hill can fix the water problem, he or she will hold the seat for 25 years. It’s the same in Townsville. I lived there until I was 19. You have no water security there either,” he said.
He would like to see roads in Yungaburra made safer for children. He tells a story of watching three young girls trying to cross the road near his roadhouse so they could get to school. He said one of the little girls broke into tears after being abused by a speeding motorist.
“The children have to cross the Gillies Highway. They need to put a zebra crossing across it so that the children have some safety,” he said.
He is paying between $ 2500 and $ 4000 a month for electricity. He said the cost to business was not sustainable and that power costs were “killing it” for everyone.
“Everyone here is screaming about electricity. It’s not just here, it’s everywhere. We’ve got the best country in the world, but we are stuffing it up,” he said.
Mr Christopher said he hadn’t made up his mind who he would vote for, but insisted it would not be the ALP or KAP.