Elsie Lange
After decades of uncertainty, residents of Jacksons Hill finally have a date for the completion of a road out the estate – five years away, in 2027.
At a meeting on Monday, June 28, council voted to push forward with plans for the road construction between Yirrangan and Watsons roads, which includes the approval of a Cultural Heritage Management Plan (CHMP) by Wurundjeri traditional owners of the area.
A CHMP survey of the proposed corridor identified “significant archeological salvage is required”, which would require “three or more years”. The total cost of the road’s construction, including up to $6.5 for the salvage, is estimated between $19.6 to $22.9 million.
The road is the last in a run of routes suggested since the development of Jacksons Hill began in 1997, which now has 1000 properties and still no southern exit point to help residents cross the railway line.
Jacksons Ward councillor Jack Medcraft introduced the motion at the meeting, adding an approved amendment for council to lobby the state government for any shortfall in funding – which could be up to $2.7 million.
“As the longest-serving councillor of Hume, I’ve been involved with this project for over 20 years, and have watched it go from an easy option to the convoluted one we now have today,” Cr Medcraft said.
Cr Medcraft also described the road as “a vehicle of political advantage” in which council has been blamed for the project’s delay, despite the reason being the added cost of the government’s more recent cultural heritage laws.
Sunbury MP Josh Bull told Star Weekly in May he was “incredibly frustrated” with the road’s delay and had been raising the issue with Hume for years.
Fellow Jacksons Ward Cr Trevor Dance said it had taken “nearly 32 years” to get the road to this point, and would be “another five years to get it completed, 2027 – 37 years all up from the start of all of this”.
Cr Jarrod Bell said having grown up in Sunbury and lived there for 30 years, he can’t remember a time when a connector road was not a point of discussion and urged councillors to adopt the motion.
“What this report gives us is a plan, it gives us a step forward, it gives us finally the most certainty I think this road has ever seen,” Cr Bell said.
Cr Bell said he wanted to be “abundantly clear” to the community that the road is still some time away.
“I ask for that fantastic patience and I understand the cynicism and the doubt and the questioning that many in the community will have about is this just another report that will be filed away and left behind,” he said.
