'Tis amazing what causes one to have little trips down Memory Lane. This week it has been the Mayor of Mount Isa in North West Queensland, John Molony.

Early this year, my old mate Molony (National Party) defeated my other old mate Ron McCulloch (Australian Labor Party) in the race for the Mayor's job in Mount Isa. Now to all of those who live in places like New South Wales and Victoria who put up with weak, namby-pamby local governments who leave their local councillors to elect their mayors for one year terms: forget it. Queensland (as does the Northern Territory - clearly something about the North) directly elects its mayors.

Ron had been mayor for something like eighteen years - a popular Irishman. John had been on the Mount Isa City Council for years and years and then took off further north and west to Burke Shire up on the Gulf of Carpentaria where he became what used to be called Shire Chairman. Now Mount Isa City Council claims - or used to - to be the biggest city in the world in area because it extends across to Camooweal and the Queensland-Northern Territory border. This sure is a contrast to Burke Shire because, as I recall it, Burke Shire does not contain one bitumen road.

Anyways, John is back in The Isa. Well, I don't suppose he ever really left. Just that, now, he's the mayor. Runs the place you could say. John owns a western men's outfitting store. John was selling western gear to stockmen before he ever had a Mount Isa store. His business life began as a hawker selling clothes and stuff from station to station in north west Queensland and the Barkly side of the NT. So he knows the Barkly Tableland and the Gulf from go to whoa.

Now let's get things straight. If you are a bloke with the lifeblood of northwest Queensland flowing in your veins; you are a paid up member or supporter of the Queensland National Party; you own a cattle property; and you make your living from people who live and work on, in and around cattle properties it is possible - but not all that likely - that you are a reconstructed, sensitive new age guy. However, those four adjectives have never applied to me mate Molony even at his best.

You see, dear Reader, in the long ago in that place accessed by a trip down Memory Lane, I used to know John and his wife Heather. It was in the late 70s to mid 80s when I was employed by the Mount Isa City Council to manage the Mount Isa Public Library, then part of the North Western Regional Library Service. The Library was situated directly opposite John's menswear store in West Street. I served on committees with him and our relationship was always co-operative and cordial.

However, I remember one night where the unreconstructed John came to the forefront. It was the night of Mardi Gras which launches Mount Isa's biggest event of the year - the Mount Isa Rodeo. We (the Dear Departed Dearly Beloved -DDDB - and Miss Eagle) were in the street outside Boydie's pub and got into conversation with John. Now, back then as now, Miss Eagle was never short of a word or an opinion. In the course of the conversation, John looked past Miss Eagle to the DDDB and said to him - How do you handle her? Miss E, not showing her inward consternation and not waiting for the DDDB to reply, piped up with a large and glowing smile - Because he's a real man. 'Nuff said.

Now maybe John can't provide a lot of intellectual stuff to the wider political debate. Perhaps - and it really is difficult - it is difficult to get anyone's attention when you are way across the Great Dividing Range and the sunlit plains extended in far-flung Mount Isa. Perhaps, he's been following the example of and taking lessons from that well-known noise from the northwest, Bob Katter Jr. Perhaps, it is just that it's rodeo time and all those lonely, boozing ringers in town provoked Molony's grey cells into gear.

But this time he's been and gone and done it. He's got himself not only national publicity, but international publicity. What else is going to happen when you talk about an isolated mining town, a shortage of nubile women, and an invitation to ugly women?

Everyone is now buying into the debate about his comments - including Catherine Deveny. But the local women are holding their own well - as they always have. I can proudly make that statement since I founded what is, arguably, the only home-grown feminist organisation Mount Isa had - the Union for Western Women. Time alone will tell whether the old adage about any publicity being good publicity will prove true in this matter.

Last night, the women of Mount Isa gathered outside the Civic Centre (right next to the Mount Isa Public Library) and demonstrated their displeasure. BTW, Molony and I once organised a celebration for Australia's win in the America's Cup in that very space. We made it a fundraiser for our Bi-Centennial Committee and we packed in a couple of thousand Mount Isans. The jollities included soap-sudding the civic fountain. Kev Ashworth, Town Clerk at the time, said that, in his view, it was the best use the fountain had ever been put to. We had a good time that night, didn't we John?

And, in the end, that is the point. Mount Isa is unique. It is great. It is a place of great experiences and great times.

My nine years in Mount Isa were probably the best years of my whole life - unreconstructed men and all! I don't pretend that Mount Isa now is the same as Mount Isa then. Remote towns are transient towns - but, as demonstrated by John, some things stay the same.

I commend Mount Isa to everyone - male, female, ugly, beautiful or just plain interesting - but with one proviso. It is tough living in an isolated community in a forbidding climate and geography. It is not for everyone. Cracks in relationships can become gaping chasms. The education of kids has to be considered. There is the question of relationships with the First Australians. While the DDDB and I loved it - my children's memories are of the harshness. For them as they look back, their memories (and this saddens me) are bleak.

Perhaps some of us have longing for green grass and urban environments in our hearts - and others, like me, bless the sunlit plains extended.

The town Mount Isa Mines built (please note that fly in-fly out mining does not bring the socially constructive elements of somewhere like Mount Isa to the human community and landscape) is the result of generations of hard work since 1924. There have been deaths, occupational hazards, blood, sweat, lead, tears, strikes and a state of emergency. Men have mined, women have battled, children have thrived and cultures have lived together well. Those of us who have lived and shared the Mount Isa experience know that we have been part of something very, very special. Long live Mount Isa!

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When you can do nothing else: bear witness.

Of floods, potholes, and infrastructure

For the story that goes with the picture above, click here.

The Big Wet continues in North Queensland as the flooding moves north. Mackay is mopping up from its biggest wet. I have posted on the Don River and associated flooding in Bowen. Now Townsville is having its problems. Miss Eagle is a banana-bender. She lives in Victoria now - but cannot yet say that she is a Victorian. Most of her life has been spent in North Queensland. Before coming to Melbourne and Upper Gully, Miss E lived at Bluewater only 15 minutes away from where the flooding, pictured below, has occurred.

But there is one thing that bugs Miss Eagle - and that is the fact that there is not a flood-free four-lane highway in North Queensland from Sarina to Mossman. When I visit Brisbane I see all the money that is spent just to keep pace with congestion. In North Queensland, however, the necessary road spending is not a matter of congestion. It is a matter of being able to move around in The Wet. Of being able to keep industry going, of being able to transport people needing medical attention.

When Miss E was a whipper-snapper in North Queensland and went on the annual road-trip to the Brisbane rellies for Christmas, January was not quite the same if one was not stuck beside a flooded creek or river on the way home. That has been more or less in the past as high level bridges have been constructed. However, all that bridge-building has still left the north with flood-prone pot-holed "highways", some quite narrow and curvaceous and dangerous. This is not a wishlist. This is a demand for necessary infrastructure.

It is high time that governments of every hue and classification - local, state, territory, federal - woke up to themselves on infrastructure spending. We have talked a lot of garbage for over two decades now about how Australia believes in a level playing field and does not subsidise business and agriculture. However, just as a lack of investment in the family home means it goes to rack and ruin and loses its value in the market-place, so does lack of investment in our nation. Investment in infrastructure such as road and rail provides jobs for the community, necessary business inputs, lifelines to health, education, and economic access. In short, investment in infrastructure is an economic subsidy which benefits the whole community - not just vested interest.

If we are to remain a truly cohesive and equitable nation, then investment in infrastructure is necessary. We have apologised to Aboriginal people this week and talked about health and education and employment inputs. But one of the most vital things you can do for Aboriginal communities is to provide them with all-weather road access. Without good road access, Aboriginal communities cannot begin to build any form of local economy. Without good road access, it is difficult for them to access services the rest of us take for granted. Without good road access, it is difficult for Aboriginal people to access medical services or for medical services to access Aboriginal communities.

And, dear Reader, guess what the problem is? It is the out of sight, out of mind syndrome. In Queensland, Brisbane is at the very bottom of the state, far far away from Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, Cairns. And let's not mention Mount Isa and the Gulf country - the Gulf country which can remain immersed in and cut off by floods for three months of the year because the country is so close to sea level.

People are hearing horror stories of children in Aboriginal communities on Cape York. Now that is even further out of sight and out of mind from Brisbane. To the extent that political leadership has almost certainly never had anything to do with the Aboriginal communities of the Cape and their traditions. How different from the Northern Territory where representation of Aboriginal people in the Parliament of the NT almost exactly matches the proportion of Aboriginal people in the Territory population.

So it can be very difficult to make yourself heard in the Parliament of Queensland if you are from the North and it gets more difficult the more remote you are from the east coast.

This problem of the lack of decent road infrastructure has always been there. We are only now starting to understand the La Nina effect and old hands look back to the floods of the forties and fifties and say "Ahah - that's what is was all about, eh!" But now there is another addition to our knowledge - Climate Change. And, if governments don't bite the bullet and do something about all-weather highway access and all-weather access to remote communities, matters will only get worse.

As any North Queenslander knows, Brisbane loves the money that flows from the North from mining, grazing, sugar, horticulture, tourism. But getting money out of Brisbane for necessary infrastructure and services is, all too often, like getting blood out of a stone. Or if funds are given they are not given with the same largesse as the funding given within the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast axis.

So, North Queensland, when the mopping up is over and you see all those local authority and bitumen people patching up the potholes to make some new bumps in your patchwork quilt of a road, get your act together and start kicking up a fuss. The squeaky wheel not only gets the most grease, it is frequently the only wheel to get any grease at all. Demand a fair share + catch up on road spending. And all you southern tourists who love to winter in the tropical sun, please get right behind them.

A photographic instance of the lack of a flood-free four-lane highway.

Please note: To the left is the high bridge over the Bohle River, just north of the twin cities of Townsville and Thuringowa. To the right is the low bridge. The high bridge carries two lanes of traffic. In dry times it is one-way traffic. In flood times, it is two-way traffic. Townsville is the industrial hub and de facto capital of North Queensland. It deserves better than this. Local Authority elections for an amalgamation of the two cities are coming up. Who is going to push this infrastructure barrow?