July 15th, 2026Kyle’s Rant

Craters of the Goldfields is my latest tourism idea.

Every year my car goes in for a roadworthy. This is a self-induced chore so as I know the state of my tyres, brakes, lights, you know, the works. Some bloke in overalls gets down on his back with a torch and decides whether my vehicle is fit to be unleashed on the public. Because nobody wants to share a road with a car that’s one pothole away from losing a wheel.
But what about carworthy roads? Because out here in the shire of a plethora of potholes, the roads have been failing their own roadworthy for years, and there’s no bloke with a torch checking much it seems.
If you’ve driven Daylesford to Creswick lately, or ventured out past Trentham after dark, you’ll know the drill. It’s not driving so much as navigating a slow-motion slalom around craters that would embarrass a moonwalker, punctuated by the odd full-body flinch when you meet one you didn’t see coming – forget about the roos.
To be fair to the council, they’re not sitting on their hands. Back in 2023, HSC tipped $2.73 million into reconstruction, resealing and gravel re-sheeting, on top of roughly $3 million more in general repair works – a genuinely serious spend for a shire with a population sitting around 16,500 people spread over 1473 square kilometres.
But it seems the potholes are being triaged rather than fixed – with a bloke with a shovel full of black rock and a handheld compounder, only to be kicked out by the next semi full of sheep or logs traversing through from east to west.
In 2023 then mayor Brian Hood put it plainly at the time: “Successive years of wet weather have seriously deteriorated road conditions and led to potholes and other road defects.” He’s not wrong, and to give the man his due, this isn’t unique to Hepburn, every rural council in the state has been fighting the same soggy, budget-draining war since the storms of 2021 and 2022 flooded the region’s roads.
Where it gets properly frustrating is the jurisdictional shell game. A fair chunk of the roads locals actually complain about, the Midland Highway, Daylesford-Trentham Road, Ballan-Daylesford Road aren’t even council’s to fix. They belong to state government, which means the council can sympathise, forward your complaint, and otherwise shrug. Meanwhile you hit the same pothole twice a week and get told it’s someone else’s pothole. Try explaining that distinction to your wheel alignment.
None of this is a dig at the crews out there with the hot-mix trucks patching a shire this size, this wet, on a rural rate base, it was never going to be a quick job. Gravel re-sheeting doesn’t happen overnight, and neither does a reseal program that has to work its way methodically through four townships and the hamlets scattered through the district before the next wet season undoes half the progress anyway. It’s a genuinely thankless treadmill.
Meanwhile with the Bureau of Meteorology declaring an El Nino weather pattern and forecasts indicating an increased likelihood of hotter and drier conditions, the council is encouraging residents to plan ahead and make use of the knowledge, networks and resources developed through the Heatwave HELP (Health Emergency Local People) project which finished on June 30 this year.
HeatSAFE training is a new municipal Heat Health Plan helping people cope with extreme heat. All the things you would think about, including the production of 250 cooling neckties for vulnerable residents and another 100 for those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. It seems a resource-heavy waste to me. Strip off and jump in a dam. Shut the blinds. Aircons and fans on. But I do reckon those neckties would come in handy as a neck brace when hurtling into a pothole at 100kph. My two cents rant over…