Residents of the Macdonald valley, 90 minutes’ drive north of Sydney, say they feel like the forgotten valley after recent floods left the area in disarray, forcing them to buy walkie-talkies to communicate.
“All those guys had the best intentions in the world,” Steve Kavanagh says of Defence Force and state government assistance in the immediate aftermath of floods at the end of June.
“They came in for six days,” he says, but the help was gone before the town was even close to back on its feet.
Now rubbish piles up in the streets, a Telstra phone box sits overturned, roofs lie destroyed on the ground and tonnes of sand from the river has moved onshore, blocking access.
“It’s like a very mini version of Lismore,” he says of the clean-up efforts.
The Macdonald valley was once a thoroughfare for anyone travelling north from Sydney. The Settlers Arms Inn, owned by Kavanagh’s in-laws, was for almost 200 years a notable waypoint in the town of St Albans.
At the heart of the MacDonald valley, St Albans has a population of about 300 and is accessible by ferry from Wisemans Ferry to the south. The two towns are similar in size, but St Albans residents feel they are often the neglected sibling when it comes to support from local, state and federal governments.
“I’ve got 40 tonnes of sand and silt out the front of the place,” Kavanagh says of the Settlers Arms. “We’re right on the river, we just got smashed.”
In recent weeks Infrastructure NSW sent someone out to make damage assessments, he says, but what’s really needed is bins and bobcats to remove rubbish and sand, like the council recently organised for Wisemans Ferry.
A spokesperson for Resilience NSW says the clean-up in St Albans commenced last weekend, with rubbish removal that began on Tuesday set to continue until it is finished.
Despite its close proximity to Sydney, St Albans has long struggled with mobile coverage – a problem exacerbated during floods and bushfires.
“We get people who drive 7km down the road and sit out the front of the school to try and make a phone call,” Kavanagh says.
Siobhan Mahoney, a resident and committee member of the Macdonald Valley Association, says: “I can’t tell you how frustrated we all are … We get treated as though we’re greater Sydney but when it comes to things like telecommunications and infrastructure, we could be in the outback somewhere.”
“We have very, very limited mobile coverage.”
Blackspot programs, funded by federal and state governments, are designed to fill the coverage gaps in areas where it isn’t commercially viable for telecommunications companies to build. Although Optus won a grant to build a tower in St Albans in 2016, Mahoney says it’s taken six years to find a site, despite residents pleading for better coverage.
“We’ve got the results of a recent survey that we did for the residents and [there was] absolutely overwhelming support for a macro tower,” she says. “So that’s the sort of … situation that we’re in.”
A spokesperson for Optus says it has been working with the community and local council, as well as the Aboriginal Land Council, to identify a site. The company is currently working through approvals to lodge a development application, meaning the tower, which was originally scheduled to be constructed by later this year, will have its timetable updated with a new completion date.
Telstra’s regional general manager, Michael Marom, says the Hawkesbury region has endured an extremely difficult period of severe weather events and all telecommunications companies need access to assess damage and power to bring services back online.
“We know the wait can be frustrating and we work to get everyone reconnected as quickly as possible,” he says. “We have also recently upgraded our infrastructure in and around St Albans to reduce disruptions, and we are monitoring our network in the region closely.”
Kavenagh says the NBN satellite service has worked out well to keep connectivity for Eftpos and internet access for the pub, but Mahoney says other residents have struggled to get decent upload speeds and are looking into other, more expensive, options, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink service.
In the meantime, the town has used a bushfire resilience grant to buy hundreds of UHF radios. They are currently being distributed to every household in town to ensure they can communicate when the next disaster strikes.
“The first thing that happens here when we get floods or fires is we usually lose power. And then the Telstra exchange runs out of power [and] we have no mobile coverage,” Mahoney says.
“That’s the only way that we can communicate with one another and ensure people are safe.”
