Every few minutes a giant freight truck, a bus or a car swerves – often across double lines – to avoid smashing its wheels into cracked-up sections of highway or large potholes jagged enough to shatter rims.
Workmen shovel asphalt into the worst of the craters only to see trucks pound their efforts to mush within hours.
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Road fixes going nowhere
The roads leading to and from the Port of Portland are, according to the RACV, among the worst in the state. The impact of this is just now being felt in the far south-west rural communities that use them. Vision courtesy Peter Corbett.
These are the wrecked main roads of Victoria's far south-west: arterials for tourists, locals and $2 billion worth of exports being freighted each year to the busy port of Portland.
They are the worst roads in all of Victoria, the RACV's roads and traffic manager, Dave Jones, declared this week.
![There seem to be more potholes than road on this stretch of road near Portland.](/web/20161031064654im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/t/f/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gscwnw.png/1477792545197.jpg)
The chief executive officer of the Glenelg Shire, Greg Burgoyne, says he fears every day for the lives of motorists and children travelling by school bus.
"A couple of weeks ago, in the lead-up to VCE exams, 20 school kids couldn't get to school by bus in Hamilton because the road had become too dangerous," Mr Burgoyne said.
Twelve people have died on roads feeding to Portland over the past 18 months, and three large log trucks have rolled on three separate main roads in the shire in the past four weeks.
No passenger trains have run in the area since the 1980s. Buses, cars and motorcycles share the roads with around 145,000 trucks each year – almost 400 a day travel to the port, many of them larger than B-doubles.
![Workmen shovel asphalt into holes on the Henty Highway near Portland.](/web/20161031064654im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/t/f/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gscwnw.png/1477792545197.jpg)
Mr Burgoyne is threatening to lead a convoy of trucks and buses 360 kilometres from Portland to the steps of parliament house in Spring Street, Melbourne, if the state government does not provide substantial funding in the next few weeks.
But the state government is refusing to release $20 million because it says it wants the federal government first to agree on a carve-up of the $1.5 billion earmarked for the stillborn East-West Link.
![The main roads of the Glenelg Shire, in far south-west Victoria, are considered by motorists to have become death traps.](/web/20161031064654im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/t/f/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gscwnw.png/1477792545197.jpg)
Meanwhile, the broken roads are endangering Victoria's export economy, according to south-west business leaders.
The chief executive of the port of Portland, Jim Cooper, said Portland was now the world's biggest exporter of hardwood wood chips, all of which were freighted to the port by road, many as logs.
![Highways near Portland fall apart as trucks power past.](/web/20161031064654im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/t/f/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gscwnw.png/1477792545197.jpg)
Mineral sands, cattle, and other agricultural produce all arrive at the port by road.
"There are a number of bad roads in Victoria, but the roads of the far south-west show much longer and more sections of rutting than anywhere else in the state," the RACV's Mr Jones said.
![Road workers try to patch a pothole on the Henty Highway near Portland as trucks thunder past.](/web/20161031064654im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/t/f/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gscwnw.png/1477792545197.jpg)
"Not enough has been spent on routine maintenance and resurfacing – these roads have become dangerously weakened and they need to be re-made and strengthened."
Truck drivers, bus company operators, district residents and visitors who spoke to Fairfax during a week driving routes leading from Hamilton, Mount Gambier, Casterton and Heywood to Portland, all used the same words to describe the roads: death traps.
How had the government allowed it to get to this, most of those who spoke to Fairfax demanded to know?
The answer turns out to be one of the oldest in Australia's federation.
Federal and state governments claimed they had money ready to be spent, but couldn't reach agreement on how that might happen.
The federal member for Wannon and Turnbull Government frontbencher Dan Tehan said he had secured $40 million over the objections of his metropolitan colleagues, to be spent on urgent repairs and road rebuilding in the Glenelg Shire.
All that was required was for the Labor state government to match it.
Mr Tehan said he had driven the Henty Highway between Portland and Hamilton "in the rain and in the dark" and had found it a frightening experience.
The Victorian Roads Minister, Luke Donellan, said the Andrews Government had $20 million ready to "fully match" the federal money for roads in the area.
But this money "won't be accessible until the Federal Government confirms the release of the $1.5 billion in joint funding that the project relies upon", Mr Donellan's spokesperson said.
This referred to money previously earmarked for the aborted East-West Link, and which has become the subject of protracted wrangling between the governments.
Mr Donellan described current proceedings as "productive negotiations".
Mr Donellan blamed "four years of inaction" by the previous government and claimed "the Glenelg Shire has seen a threefold increase in road funding since the last Budget of the former Liberal Coalition Government".
Mr Burgoyne agreed the shire's disintegrating roads were the result of inertia by a series of governments, but said there had been no increase in funding.
"In fact, in real terms it's gone backwards," he said.
"The Glenelg Shire's share from $44.4 million for the whole south-west coast this year is $14 million.
"That's no more than previous, despite road usage usage rising by more than 100 per cent over the past four years."
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