The sheer volume of tourists using Lakeland as their gateway to Cape York each year adds to the case for the development of a local health clinic, says editor Lyndon Keane. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
If you told our politicians they needed to drive almost 80 kilometres to access health services, how long do you think it would take for them to wipe the look of surprise and moral indignation off their face?
It’d never happen, but it’s a situation those living and working in Lakeland know only too well as they try to get the State Government to take their calls for a local health clinic seriously.
It’s absolutely ridiculous – and outright offensive – for those in Brisbane who tug on the purse strings to expect the Lakeland community to be content with having to drive almost an hour to access health services. That mentality would cost electorates if it were adopted in other parts of the state closer to the south-east corner, so why are people at the gateway to Cape York just being told to cop the absurdity on the chin?
One of the major stumbling blocks for the current status quo – apart from the fact a 78-kilometre abyss to medical help just hours from one of the top tourist spots in Queensland should be viewed by the government as a monumental service delivery failure – is that the drive is, well, undriveable, for sustained periods during the wet season. Has anyone from the government actually seen the Little Annan River raging and making the route to Cooktown impassable? Have they pondered how useless assistance from the air is when your local airstrip is inaccessible during flood events?
With an unofficial population nearing 1,000 and the Lakeland Irrigated Area Scheme having the potential to lift the community’s numbers to more than 3,000 and inject $500 million a year into the region, there is a genuine case for the government to get ahead of the eight ball by putting vital infrastructure, like a clinic, in place before Lakeland booms. A government being proactive and showing some forethought when it comes to regional and remote development, you ask? One can remain the eternal optimist, I guess.
The reality is we should not be talking about the establishment of a clinic in a place like Lakeland. There should be one already built and serving the community, and the estimated 100,000 visitors who explore Cape York each year and almost certainly pass through Lakeland at some stage on their adventure. The sheer numbers sell the necessity of a local clinic, and that’s without factoring in many of those visitors are grey nomads who rely on accessible health services. Maybe the government just figures if they’ve driven thousands of kilometres to reach the doorway to Cape York, another 45 or so minutes in the car for medical help isn’t too much of an impost.
While I was fuelling up in Lakeland last week, I got talking to a traveller from Victoria who was making his bucket list pilgrimage to Pajinka with his wife, both of whom it’s fair to say were closer to providing sustenance for feeding earthworms than lacing up their shoes for a half marathon. If he’s reading this, I’m pretty confident Col would support my assertion, although perhaps not in such vivid terms. Anyway, we got onto the subject of services as one got farther and farther up the Peninsula Developmental Road, and he asked me what the biggest gap to seeing a doctor would be if required. When I told him that gap was actually in Lakeland, and that medical professionals were either 61 kilometres to the north, in Laura, or 78km to the north-east, in Cooktown, poor old Col nearly dropped the diesel nozzle he was holding and momentarily looked like he was about to require attention from the aforementioned medical types. His eventual response summed up the lunacy of the situation: “What? Shit, how does anyone reckon that’s right? Where I’m from, pollies would lose their jobs over that.”
Truer words have never been spoken, Col.
