With Christmas fast approaching, in our shire, this also means harvest time. We have had extremely wet conditions of late, and farmers, whilst looking forward to a bumper year, face all sorts of challenges to harvest their crops successfully. Unprecedented, will be trucks not being able to go onto paddocks, bogging of equipment and an extremely slow harvest.
Associated with this are that the roads have deteriorated as everyone knows and the massive task that Council and VicRoads have of restoring them to their original condition. I ask that people be patient and give the example that our road crews were fully booked out for 18 months ahead before this and now have to fit in all the budgeted capital works projects, our rotational maintenance of all the shires roads and finding time to prioritise unscheduled repairs due to weather incidents as well.
On a brighter note, Lake Hindmarsh is now receiving an abundant amount of water at present and hopefully make for a "new" experience this summer. I think that if the lake can hold its own over the summer months and we enter autumn with a good level of water, we may see water flow to Lake Albacutya for the first time in 45 years.
I look forward to delivering some wonderful projects in our shire this coming year and I know that our councillors and council officers will continue to work hard on providing our communities with state-of-the-art amenities. In saying this, our concentration will be heavily based on obtaining road funding to continue the gains we were making in our road network ratings that we were enjoying before the rains.
I would like to wish all the farmers a successful harvest in the coming months.