Springtime Comes To Nanango

September 26, 2015

Anyone who’s driven through Nanango over the past week or so has witnessed a little piece of history … and no one could be more delighted than Cr Barry Green.

The pear and plum trees planted along Henry Street in January 2014 have burst into full bloom for the first time, welcoming visitors to the South Burnett’s oldest town with an avenue of brilliant white and purple flowers.

Cr Green said the trees may have caused a bit of controversy when they were first put in but the feedback he’d received over the last few weeks led him to think attitudes were changing rapidly.

“It’s a bit like the Drayton Street traffic lights,” Cr Green said.

“A lot of people were annoyed when they first went in for all sorts of reasons but now most people tell me they’re really glad they’re there.

“And traffic in Drayton Street has gone up since the lights went in, so I guess that says it all.”

Cr Green said he understood some people were also attached to old camphor laurel trees that used to dot Henry Street, but they had to be removed because they were a declared pest plant and were standing in the way of fixing long-standing drainage problems.

“You only have to look at Henry Street today to realise how much better it is,” he said.

“The water is finally flowing where it’s meant to flow, and it’s much more open and safe than it used to be.”

Cr Green said he’s now looking forward to the completion of the final pieces of the CBD upgrade along Drayton and Fitzroy streets, which are expected to be finished by the end of October.

Council workmen are now laying the final bits of concreting along Drayton Street, and this will be followed by the erection of structures that will provide new seating and shade areas.

Once the final works are complete, the Council will be holding a community street party in November to celebrate completion of the project.

Cr Green said he was proud of the CBD upgrade for several reasons.

One was that upgrading of the CBD was the main goal he set himself when he was elected to the South Burnett Regional Council eight years ago.

He said when he was elected onto Nanango Shire Council, his major goal was to get street-lighting in the CBD.

And although it took him two terms in office, he finally did it.

“It took six years to get this project going, too, and I had to fight a long time for it,” Cr Green said.

“But I’m very proud of the end result and I think it leaves Nanango in much better shape for the future.”

He said Nanango now looks like a town that’s going places.

“And that’s the sort of comment people have been making at the Visitor Information Centre, too.”

Cr Green said he’s also proud the project has kept to its $1.1 million budget, $290,000 of which came from the State Government thanks to Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington.

“We spent an extra $600,000 on fixing up Henry Street and the infrastructure underneath Drayton Street, but those things came out of Council’s capital works budget and they had to be done before we could put the streetscaping on top of it,” Cr Green said.

“Henry Street turned out to be a real quagmire when we started digging into it and Drayton Street’s underground infrastructure hadn’t been touched for about 60 years, so it was a real mess.”

Remedying these problems caused schedule delays.

“We also had to wait a lot longer than we thought when Main Roads put in the traffic lights,” Cr Green said.

“But they’re all fixed now.”

A third reason he’s proud of the project is the trees themselves.

“When they went in they had to get acclimatised to the area and a lot of them suffered wind burn, which made them look pretty rough the first year,” Cr Green said.

“Some people even thought a few of them had died. But none of them did, and now they’ve become used to the area they’re really starting to power ahead.

“You just wait five years until they’ve grown up and bushed out and I think you’ll be amazed at how good they’ll look.

“In fact, I reckon in future we’ll all know when spring and autumn have arrived in the South Burnett, because it will be Nanango’s trees that will tell us.”