Woolomin residents call for repairs to Nundle Road and Lindsays Gap Road with fears someone will get killed

Located 20 kilometres north of Nundle, in Woolomin, villagers said their streets are filled with potholes and patchwork - causing damage to their vehicles and concern for their safety.

Dawn Gallagher, who has lived in Woolomin for 23 years, said the situation is so bad that locals are often forced to drive onto each other's nature strips to avoid potholes.

"There are places that make you hold your breath," Ms Gallagher said.

"Especially if there's another car joining you on the road coming the opposite direction and you've got nowhere to go."

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Ms Gallagher said the dirt road outside her house is dotted with potholes, its repair neglected by Tamworth Regional Council.

"I'm pretty disgusted by them frankly," Ms Gallagher said.

"They don't give a stuff for people in the villages."

Tamworth Regional Council manager operations and construction, Murray Russell, said many of the residential roads in Woolomin are considered low risk, with the procedure for repairs being to fill the potholes with gravel.

"These residents that have some of these minor defect, they really just have to try and be a bit patient and realise that there's lots of issues out there and some take a while to get to," Mr Russell said.

TRC currently looks after around a 3000 kilometre road network, with 1000 kilometres of sealed road, and 2000 kilometres unsealed.

After inspecting the roads of concern Mr Russell said they were assessed on the basis of the seriousness of the problem relative to other roads in the region, with funds and resources allocated to the major roads.

"We often do small temporary patches to fix a relatively minor problem on a low risk area, then we spend more money on the bigger, more serious issues on the more major roads," he said.

But Ms Gallagher said the temporary, gravel fill-ins washed away once it rained, leaving the potholes full of water.

"I just can't see why they won't put the money in to do a decent job right at the beginning, if they did they wouldn't have to keep coming and patching up the problem," she said.

"We pay our rates like everybody else in Tamworth, but it seems the only thing we get is garbage removal."

But it's not just the residential dirt roads the locals are concerned about.

Villager Nicole Palmer, who has lived in Woolomin for seven years, said Nundle Road resembled a "patchwork quilt" while Lindsays Gap Road was an accident waiting to happen.

Just recently, Ms Palmer said her car slid sideways on Lindsays Gap Road after she hit a "monster corrugation".

"Somebody is actually going to die on that road, I can guarantee it," she said.

"Parts of it are just down right dangerous."

With the recent rain and flooding events Mr Russell said maintaining roads had become extremely challenging.

"We recognise that some of the repairs are taking longer than we would have liked, but that's just driven by those weather conditions."

A significant amount of money is currently being spent on repairing Lindsay Gap Road, which had been "damaged very, very badly" from logging trucks travelling between Hanging Rock and Werris Creek.

"Lindsay Gap Road was never built to handle that sort of traffic, it's been smashed," he said.

Mr Russell said TRC had also requested to had over ownership of Nundle Road, Lindsay Gap Road and Ogunbil Road to the state government to handle.

"That's how seriously council takes it, we've recognised the fact that the state government underfunded those roads for many years, so we've been invited to make a submission on that," Mr Russell said.

Upgrades over the past 18 months have also seen 1.8 kilometres of roads through Woolomin reconstructed, Mr Russell said.

"Occasionally, I get a little but frustrated by the fact that residents in Woolomin have for a number of years have been asking for Nundle Road to be repaired, and now it has, and now the focus is on one pothole outside the front of their house on an unsealed road that services five properties."

Despite this, Ms Palmer said she continuously felt "forgotten about and left behind" by TRC.

Beyond the roads Ms Palmer said she spent hours of her time mowing council verges outside her property due to the lack of attention given to the village.

"It doesn't get any maintenance because there's no tourism here," Ms Palmer said.

"Just share the services around."

Mr Russell said residents across the Tamworth region should be reminded to keep contacting TRC with their concerns, but to be patient with them.

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