Kybong residents anger at Gympie council over Lobwein, Glory Rd condition

A group of Kybong residents are fuming over what they say is an ongoing lack of maintenance on their dirt road which has left it a corrugated and pot hole-littered mess.

Residents of Lobwein and Glory Rds at Kybong are frustrated about a longstanding lack of maintenance to the roads which one described as a “slop hole”.

A dozen residents shirked drizzling weather wet Wednesday morning to call for repairs to the rutted, corrugated, and pothole littered two-kilometre stretch of dirt road next to the aerodrome.

The road had become so bad that glider pilots had taken to driving through the aerodrome to avoid travelling along Lobwein Rd.

Richard Shutte said a washout outside his home prevented him and his wife from getting one of their cars out for months.

“The front wheels would go into the gutter and the front of the car would hit the ground,” he said.

Kybong residents Richard Shutte, Melissa Flood, Cindy Medway, Ricky Frost, John Kenman, George Attard, Anna Wyroslak, Tony Kerr and Lyndall Kenman, who living along Lobwein and Glory Rds, are fuming over what they say is an ongoing lack of maintenance on their dirt road which has left it a corrugated and pot hole-littered mess.

The family lodged a complaint with Gympie Regional Council, but it was six months before the washout was fixed.

“For over six months we couldn’t get our car out,” Mr Shutte said.

Melissa Flood said the garbage truck service used the grass verge “because they don’t want to drive up on the road … and they go flat out”.

She said she inquired with the council and was told Lobwein Rd’s condition did not yet meet the “intervention levels for repairs”.

The floods had further damaged the roads, and “patch jobs” were the only works done since then.

Council’s infrastructure services director Graham O’Byrne said the two roads were flood damaged in the 2022 disasters, and Lobwein Rd was graded in July 2022.

Lobwein Rd has been rendered a corrugated and pothole riddled mess, with the intersection of it and Glory Rd described by one resident as a “slop hole”.

The floods had unfortunately left “thousands of damaged sites across the region” all needing assessment and review from the state government’s Queensland Reconstruction Authority “before council can proceed”.

“We understand and acknowledge that the prolonged wait can be frustrating for residents,” Mr O’Byrne said.

He said the road is “not identified for sealing however council will undertake some initial investigations and add to the list for future budget considerations”.

Lobwein Rd is scheduled to be graded again in December, if weather allows.

Mrs Flood said the residents hoped it would be done by the end of the year, but scepticism remained.

“It’s just been an ongoing thing … we keep putting back and back and back,” Mrs Flood said.

Lyndall Kenman said her and her neighbours “would like to see our roads maintained more often than every three years”.

“For the rates that we all pay and the farming that goes on in this district … a lot of heavy traffic comes over our roads,” Mrs Kenman said.