James Porter

4:50 Mayor Wilkie: First is from Mr James Porter. The topic is access issues to Eastern Branch Creek Road. Mr Porter, would you like to come to the lectern and present your deputation, please? Thank you.

5:03 Speaker 7: Thank you, all of you, councillors and CEO.

5:08 I've had the property at Twillio Bay and Twillio, and had that for about 40 years.

5:16 And the access was on Eastern Branch Road, which is part of the trails.

5:25 And there's been a lot of money keeping that road open over the years. And recently... It's been locked. We've locked in the work that was going on there. So we've got three million dollars spent with my family and children. There's a sort of movement on the other side of the hill, which is sitting down in someone's house.

5:49 And before that, there was no road around the western side of Wackney Road that was open to a house, and that was it. That was developed for me recently. So I've got a lot of vision for the council and what they'd like to do with that road up a bit. Now, over the years, the area around Twillio Hills has had massive land collapses. There was a house on the other side which went down, and it split in half on the right from the other side. There were packs of bananas there that came off the hill years ago. The depot where you drive into the Eastern Branch Road off that bridge, that whole lot collapsed in 1945 on the floor. There's been some massive clutches in my place at times, and along Wackney Road, there's been three clutches outside, three times over the years, across a few other sites, and I put in a second access road out to, on the other side of Trinidad, out to Wackney Road, New Hampshire City, back in 22, the whole lot of that went down, not even a half, and I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, I think there was something on the lower side that went down about a million and a bit, and the whole paddock went down.

7:09 And recently, the gully below that has moved down, whoops, moved down 100 metres, and when something moves now, and the butt of it goes, and above it all the land started to feel down, right up to the edge of that bridge road. And that bit of my road is gonna go this way. I've got bad eyesight. It's my injury.

7:35 And what's happened during the works, I went up there one day, about eight or nine months ago, to do some work on the east and west coast side, and the next man up the hill there came down and swear at me and told me to get off there, and he said he'd bring a fuse and other people would go. I'd already done a lot of work there, probably, with the shooting equipment, so that didn't seem to happen. The next day, there were two big wire, you know, this wide wire thing, put in front of that wire on the front of my tank there, and some water barriers to be sent, big orange water barriers. So when some cattle got out the other side of the hill, all the potential was gone for the roadworks. And I had no cattle raising ever. You get these road cattle that... find some sweet grass on there, and they keep getting out. They jump, they jump and fall to the fence and get out. And they were getting out. And they'd come around, they'd all come running around the hill to the other side. And I couldn't get in because of these barriers. I couldn't physically move them. And the cattle all jumped into the micro-merchants, and it took us hours to get them out. And that's happened a few times now. And I rode in... Before the work started, I rode in, telling the Shire that that was my private road. And we maintained it.

8:50 It was my best access. I wanted it restored to Tuba Drive. And then after the 22 lane collapses, that was the only way we could get out. And I was driving that road daily. And I got the other people up the road, the main ones, who brought their vehicles around, and they'd put them on the other side of the strips and let me in and out for some weeks. And I was doing that too, of course, because it was safe in the walk, the other side where the road was clear because of the snakes and things you get at night driving along the cross.

9:21 And anyway, then recently, the kids go riding down that road. That's East Inverness Road. And here's this over 9-and-a-grade cement block stuck there. And the kids couldn't get around their horses. And the cattle, when they get around there, they get scared of them walking down the road. And I want them to move. And I want them to clean the gate. Because each end of the trail, if you look out, there's a gate on the back of this road, which can't be pulled in, which is locked. And the other end, just before my gate on the side, if the road goes over there, it turns right and then down down, you get to the Murphy's side. That's locked too. And where you end up, the trail of Michael Murphy's, which is on top of that road, there's a trail close on there. So it's plenty of feet. And then a little bit, about 200 metres from my gate, on the trail in Michael's, the land is collapsing. There's a two-metre drop there now, which has developed over the last two or three months. And on the lower side of that, further down, the whole hill's stripped away and the trail's not much wider than these chairs here. And there's a nine-metre drop there. And so it's closed, right? It's a settlement, but it's closed.

10:36 But I'm not affected, because I entered my property well before that, and drive on this other road. Um... Ah, yeah. So, um... Yeah, I could argue with a lot of other points. Another major point was, I was dozing down in my creek. There was no funding section there. It was pretty all locked out of the town. And I'm not going to be using this till I've got the stone, and it's lucky I was fully covered with a lot of deer around and wild stings. Before I drove that day, I was 100 metres. I couldn't see. I was in part of the river, and I lay down in the gully for five hours till I got enough wind in me, you know, trying to breathe, and enough recovery to drive the doze up the ridge and move the ambulance. And they couldn't get in the other way, because in the two of us, I went back and got in the trawl drive, to waste some time. And, um... It kind of helped me out. So, I do need two emergency accesses there. It's got no return. You have accidents in that country. And the barrier could stop a fire engine getting up there, a bushfire could get in, an ambulance, and anyone else wanting to get up there, the police, they couldn't get over those barriers. Um... So, I'd like them to move. And there's a good chance of moving now, because 18-8's contractors have rather finished their job.

11:56 They're just doing the finishing and a few other jobs now. They've got an excavator there. We can take them back and put them round at the ends of the place where they were used for. So, that's as stable as his house, which is preferably moving.

12:10 Um... Anyway, I've lost the way to give it, but I'll get it in some brochures for Victor to give out. There's a map on there. And I'll cover the map. And the map of the Twin Hills area is showing some of the landslides that happened recently. And some photographs showing the barriers and, um... The trawl up there being used by cement trucks and the break in it. And what's happening on my truck, all the landslides there are massive. And, um... So, I'm probably going to be dropped in again. If we didn't have a dozer, we were never going to get out. And the dozer at the moment is in the workshop. It's a problem. Um... And, as you know, there are two or three streets happening on Wackney Road already, next to the works that are just off the highway. There's a massive street there.

13:05 There's a massive land from Wackney Road right through Mercury. It's a whole block of land that's been moved in the model environment 500 metres away. It's moving. And we had radar on that in May. It was something we looked at. It's the building environment and things. This is the radar about, like, two types of tallow and trench. And over that period of about a month, that whole block of land moved 10 centimetres. And over the next 15 months, we've got 10 centimetres. And it's keeping on burning. You know? And it's... It's just going to have to give up on the trail there. But I want my access. But it's safe. I can get in and out. So... Well, 18-8's are there. But I hope that the council will consider moving those blocks around somewhere else where they'll be useful. And they've given me a key to the lock gate onto Blackburn Trail. But I need to get out. You know? It's a normal young man. And I've got health problems. And I did pull out of the consultation, which the anthology would invite me down, but I never put my name on the consultation list for dashboard or whatever. And after a while, I pulled out of that because I had medical problems in the bridge that we had to go to.

14:22 And then my friend came down with breast cancer and I'd come down for a late-night spray-out. It took me about two months to get in and we were just taking it in. Um... So I decided that I... And I wanted to write to the council about this, you know, rather than trying to do it through a contract that I'd been sold. Um... So... I didn't follow that link up because I had been initially lost all day. Um... Anyway, that's the situation. Lots across the road. A lot go. And the looners don't have a chance to get out. And I've needed to go in and recover cattle and fix up fences and things. Um... And if there's any heavy earthworm coming, I'll have to bring them in that way too because they're quite brave. They're stuck further down the road. Um... And the road is safe. You spent $3 million there. 9,000 cubic metres of soil wood. It's safe. It should be safe. And it was safe after the 22 collapse. There was a little bit of... We knocked down one of the shoulders there. There was a bit of a drop. Knocked that down. We were driving in and out. All the neighbours were driving in and out there. And... The jury rang me up and asked me when the whole Twin Hills, Eastern Branch Roadside Collective rang and couldn't let anyone out. So I let everyone drive through the place and didn't let all of them go.

15:40 So you need a second access. You need to be accessible. So not only have you got the council to figure it out, and I've... And Vicky's got some of these and I want those to hand out to you after the meeting. OK? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Porter.

15:58 Mayor Wilkie: Dr Porter. That's OK. Thank you. In about... After we have the other deputation and the questions,