‘Just horrific’: Demands for deadly intersection upgrade after 25 years of fatalities

After more than 25 years of harrowing scenes and lives lost at a notorious Ipswich intersection, locals say they have waited long enough for change.

Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding and Divisional Councillor Pye Augustine with Willowbank residents who are campaigning for urgent upgrades to the Ipswich-Rosewood Road and Cunningham Highway intersection.

A fatal intersection used daily by 5000 military workers has not had a single upgrade project survive past planning stages despite a devastating road toll and desperate campaigning by locals for more than 25 years.

Willowbank residents have been urging the government to upgrade the Ipswich-Rosewood Road and Cunningham Highway intersection for decades while its toll continues to tick upwards.

The road is used by thousands of workers at the nearby Amberley RAAF base and is also a key access route to the annual CMC Rocks country music festival which attracts 23,000 visitors each year.

RAAF veteran George Hatchman — the namesake of Willowbank’s Hatchman Nature Reserve— started fighting for change in the late 1990s after his wife was “almost killed” at the intersection.

“She was parked there waiting to turn right to go to Amberley while traffic came in the other direction,” Mr Hatchman said.

“The car came speeding up the highway, hit her in the rear end and punched her right across the road.”

A turning lane was put in after that incident, but there had been little change ever since according to Mr Hatchman.

RAAF veteran George Hatchman, who has a nature reserve named after him in the Willowbank area.

More than 5000 RAAF workers need to get in and out of Amberley every day for work – causing major congestion as they travel along the Ipswich-Rosewood Road and Cunningham Highway intersection via Southern Amberley Road.

That main access point for the RAAF air base comes out on Ipswich-Rosewood Road, just metres down from the notorious intersection.

The same intersection is also the access point for the residential areas of Willowbank, which sees increasing traffic from nearby boom areas of Walloon, Thagoona, and Ripley.

Traffic surges when major motorsports events and leading country music festival CMC Rocks come to town.

Local Glenys Ashton said they simply “can’t get out” of the suburb onto the highway while RAAF employees were entering and exiting for the day.

“I always have to leave half an hour extra to get to work,” she said.

“These people defend our country, they could be called to war any day, but they’ve got more chance of being killed on this road than they have being killed in war.”

Ms Ashton said there had been talk about upgrading the intersection since her family moved to Willowbank in 1953.

“We just hear sirens constantly,” she said.

“If you go right up to the line where you’re supposed to, you can’t see because it’s obstructed with signs,” she explained.

“So you’re better off staying back, because it’s too dangerous and you risk being absolutely smashed. It is just horrific.”

Ipswich-Rosewood Road and Cunningham Highway intersection. Picture: Google Maps

Tow truck driver Chad Hayes said he had attended multiple crashes at the intersection after people got “impatient”.

“They’re looking at traffic coming down the hill, and they scoot around the corner and then there’s a car there,” he said.

“The traffic’s coming down and they break, or they lose traction and bang, T -bone.”

Mr Hayes told The Courier-Mail he’d seen a number of fatalities there since moving to Willowbank 24 years ago.

“I’ve seen fatalities with adults, children, animals, livestock involved constantly over the years,” Mr Hayes said.

“Some of those incidents really stick in your mind … The amount of bodies on that highway that you’ve seen under a white sheet – and 25 years in long enough.”

Willowbank resident Wayne Smith shared how his family had “spent many occasions helping people out of cars after an accident at the intersection”.

“One particular accident that stays in my mind was a truck with a farming couple in it,” Mr Smith said.

“Susie (Mr Smith’s wife) was comforting the wife in a passenger’s seat, and her husband was dead beside her, but the wife didn’t know he was gone.”

Paul Smith, Susie Smith and Wayne Smith.

His son Paul Smith said he had seen “terrible things” as a child growing up in the area.

“You’d hear the screech, then the bang, and we’d be first on the scene most times,” he said.

Mr Smith said even just installing a sign to warn people that it was a high crash zone would likely save lives.

Ipswich City Mayor Teresa Harding made a unanimously supported motion in Thursday’s Council meeting to write to the Queensland Minister for Transport and Main roads to consider interim safety measures for the area.

“The Ipswich City Council’s We Can’t Wait advocacy campaign is advocating on behalf of our community for funding commitments from all candidates in the upcoming state election for critical upgrades for the Amberley Intersection,” Cr Harding said.

She said that in the five years from 2018 to 2022, there were 90 crashes that involved injuries and three fatalities on the Ipswich to Willowbank stretch of the Cunningham Highway.

Just last year, the intersection claimed the life of Ripley resident Ariel Jocson, only weeks before his wedding.

The 25-year-old international student had been going to Toowoomba to visit a family member on September 17, 2023.

Ariel had been a passenger in a car turning west onto the highway from Ipswich-Rosewood Road, when the car was hit by a truck, according to police at the time.

Ariel Jocson was just 25 when his life was tragically cut short on the Cunningham Highway. Picture: Supplied

Cr Harding told The Courier-Mail she had heard “countless harrowing stories” from Willowbank residents at the ‘We Can’t Wait’ community meeting.

“Susie Smith has held the hand of a bleeding woman trapped in a wreckage at the Amberley intersection, as her husband died beside her,” Cr Harding said.

“At just 14 years old, Paul Smith crawled into an overturned car to hold a father’s neck still, after a chunk of glass become wedged in it during his accident at the same intersection.”

“All levels of government agree that this intersection, the main access point to Australia’s largest air base, is no longer coping with the growth we have seen here in Ipswich.

“It’s time to remove politics from this discussion and focus on the human cost, which is unacceptably high.”

Mr Hayes said it was disappointing that they had spent “three generations campaigning, but still no funding for the upgrade”.

“We need to look at the broken promises, all the information that was provided 20 or more years ago, and say, who’s asleep at the wheel?” “Why can’t we get the funding? We need change,” he said.

“Some of the elderly residents that have been campaigning most of their lives – nearly 40 years some of them – out here for the Cunningham Highway upgrade, unfortunately before the highway is upgraded some people are actually passing away before that eventuates,” Mr Hayes said.

“I will probably be their age before the highway is upgraded if they don’t put funds on the table.”

Former presidents of the Willowbank area residents group, George Hatchman and Chad Hayes were campaigning in 2019.

Mr Hatchman said within a few months, they would be “25 years in the waiting” since they started designing the Amberley Interchange upgrades.

“This is Australia’s biggest military base … To me, it’s a bit of a national disgrace that they haven’t given it further priority,” he said.

Mr Hatchman had been on the original Community Reference Group tasked to design a bypass at the intersection back in 2000.

The target was to have the $340 million project constructed by the end of 2017.

“Come 2016 – which was 14 years after we finished the planning and one year before it was supposed to be finished – there came the awareness of well we’re not going to get it done,” Mr Hatchman said.

“They commissioned another review of that intersection.”

In 2018, Mr Hatchman said he received a phone call from the previous Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack on his birthday, telling him the Federal Government would put $170 million dollars towards developing the Cunningham Highway.

Mr Hatchman said the only catch was they had to convince the State Government to provide the other $170 million required.

But the State Government would only put in $20 million, so that “shortfalled the whole thing down,” Mr Hatchman said.

“They believed, it was a major highway with proximity to the air force base, it should be funded 80-20 by the Feds (Federal Government).

“We put public pressure in again, and around about 2020 they decided to graciously fund $1.65 million towards putting an interim solution – by putting roundabouts there.”

But the roundabout plan received an overwhelmingly negative response from community consultation, and was scrapped.

“If they put a roundabout there, they’d never develop the intersection,” Mr Hatchman explained.

“It’d just be like that for the next 50 years.”

MP Shayne Neumann. Picture Lachie Millard

Federal member for Blair Shayne Neumann said the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) was now investigating other options like a flyover and bypass.

“The estimated cost of the Cunningham Highway planning project (including Amberley interchange) has increased, in part due to increased community expectations for the Amberley interchange,” Mr Neumann said.

In April 2023, the Federal Government announced they would put another $170 million towards Cunningham Highway upgrades, and the State would put in $42,500.

Mr Hatchman pointed out that was “still short of the $340 million dollars it was costing back in 2000”.

“And of that $212.5 million, only $20 million was allocated to the Amberley Intersection.”

Mr Neumann said TMR was currently reassessing the Cunningham Highway planning program, focusing on the highest priority projects within the $20 million committed funding.

“TMR is also investigating a short-term treatment to improve safety at the Amberley Intersection as a priority,” Mr Neumann said.

He noted the latest federal budget provided an extra $1.5 million for the Cunningham Highway safety upgrades.

“There were no funds in the latest federal and state budgets (2024-25 Budgets) for the Amberley intersection upgrade design and construction as the project is still in the planning phase,” he said.

Mr Hatchman said upgrades were “well overdue.”

Although the intersection is a key focus for their campaigning, Mr Hatchman said the road duplication along the Willowbank stretch of the highway was also greatly needed to ease their traffic issues.

“It’s not to say you can’t respect that there’s a need right across the country for improved roads,” he said.

“But this one has done it’s apprenticeship long enough.”