Dirty street puts visitors off

WITH no money to keep up appearances, Gympie's tourist destination, Tozer Street, may look a little worse for wear for some time.

Run-down buildings and dirty streets greet Mary Valley Heritage Railway tourists in Tozer Street. Picture: Craig Warhurst

WITH no money to keep up appearances, Gympie's tourist destination, Tozer Street, may look a little worse for wear for some time.

Tozer Street business woman Lorraine Carter is concerned the street gives Mary Valley Heritage Railway tourists the wrong image of Gympie.

She has written to Gympie Regional Council asking them to tidy up and beautify the dirty and unkempt street.

And council has responded saying there just wasn't enough money in the maintenance budget to give CBD level attention to Tozer Street.

“The Rattler (steam train) is a great thing for Gympie, but the first thing the tourists see when they get here is this filthy dirty street,” Ms Carter said.

Looking over Tozer Street, council garden beds are often full of weeds or barren, footpaths aren't mown, shop fronts are run down, gutters are full of leaves and rubbish and the underpass is painted with graffiti.

Ms Carter said it wasn't the right image Gympie should be giving tourists.

“Tozer Street is most tourists' first stop off in Gympie,” she said.

“We need to make Gympie more appealing to tourists instead of them thinking 'great train ride, but what a horrible hole of a place'.”

She said it wouldn't cost that much to plant some trees to beautify the street and keep it clean.

“The shopkeepers do their best to make the place look nice, but there is so much traffic on the road and it spreads the dirt and dust.”

The hairdresser said Mary Street was cleaned by council staff every morning and, while she didn't expect the same level of service in Tozer Street, to see the Council do some work in the street 'a couple of times a week would be nice'.

Yesterday, Mayor Ron Dyne said long grass and weeds in the area had been slashed and tidied up.

“It certainly doesn't get the attention of Mary Street,” he said.

“I think it's been tidied up really well, but the shop fronts are dependent on shop owners and are a financial consideration for them.”

Cr Dyne said council's sweeper truck came through and swept the gutters, but he would try and get the truck to go through Tozer Street a bit more often.

He also said graffiti was a major issue everywhere, not just in Tozer Street, and he would get staff to clean it off what little there was there was on the Rattler.

Originally published as Dirty street puts visitors off