Access to services, by road, in remote or very remote areas

Even in good weather, many outback roads are dangerous, just one of the problems being “bulldust holes” – craters in the road surface which have filled up with dust. Driving into one of these at high speed can completely wreck the front end of a car.

Can You Spot the Bulldust Hole? Once it rains, roads become severely chewed up and impassable, especially while still wet if used by road-trains.

Signs advising whether or not roads are closed can be found everywhere in the outback. Many roads are maintained by mining companies or other private concerns, and the cost of grading them before they can be used again (once they dry out) is quite substantial. Penalties for driving on closed roads are severe.

…Road distance … changes considerably when a road is cut by flooding and travel time can vary considerably with road conditions which in turn can change from season to season or even from day to day…

The following communities in the Northern Territory, for example, had no effective road access due to seasonal flooding for over 100 days in the past year (2000) and their… score is not… a good indicator of their relative remoteness. They are, however, already in the Very Remote Class.”

Community	Population
Nhulunbuy	3695
Yirrkala	521
Oenpelli	741
Maningrida	1328
Milingimbi	941
Ramingining	473
Gapuwiyak	447
Numbulwar	619
Lajamanu	591

(A good way of picturing how remote these places are – in terms of access to services – is to search for them using Google Maps – satellite view.)

To get a good picture of just how much of Australia is remote or very remote, you can use this link:
http://www.doctorconnect.gov.au/internet/otd/Publishing.nsf/Content/locator

If people are genuinely unable to go to the services they need, the services must go to them. This sort of compromise is almost financially and physically impossible. When it comes to health, however, time and distance are important. About 24% of Aboriginals live in what might as well be called the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is a special place where you can actually hear silence.

In remote areas there is little chance of gathering economies of scale, not just for private enterprise but also for governments which must consider:

1.      how much “bang” taxpayers get for their bucks; and (let’s be frank)

2.      how many votes every budget dollar can buy.

A weakness of the five measures of remoteness, acknowledged by the ABS, is that they do not measure

“impediments to ‘accessibility’ such as time/cost of travel and the socio-economic capability of the community to overcome these impediments.”

In other words, if people don’t have access to a working vehicle, they can’t get to important services.

If the problem of delivering services is a thorny one, it became a whole lot pricklier with each successive attempt to solve questions of land rights. Before we get to land rights, however, there are some other topics to tackle: With a clear idea of distance and communication problems, it's time to move on - to the 1967 referendum !