Australia Weather News

Twenty-eight school children in North Queensland are adjusting to a new school campus, after damage to a road during Cyclone Debbie made their regular school commute unfeasible.

Children who live on the Sarina Range were normally transported by bus to and from Swayneville State School, a ten-minute trip.

After part of Marlborough Sarina Rd was washed away in "almost biblical" cyclone damage, the road was closed indefinitely, leaving the school community facing uncertainty.

While there is an alternate route down the mountain, it would have taken a bus 80 minutes one-way to ferry the children to school, an option parents wanted to avoid.

But less than three weeks after the cyclone hit, the students were back at school on the first day of Term 2 in a new campus on the top of the Sarina Range.

A demountable building has been placed on land at Colston Park owned by the Country Women's Association, and will serve as Swayneville State School's temporary second campus.

Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey has estimated fixing the road and enabling students to attend school at the main campus could take 18 months, which will include another cyclone season.

Students adjusting to new reality

School principal Roslyn Waldron said the students were coping well in their new campus.

"The whole community is in an adjustment phase," she said.

"No-one asked for this to happen, but the Swayneville community is adjusting."

The building, with two classrooms, a storage area and a kitchenette, accommodates 28 students as well as three teachers, a teacher aide, and a cleaner.

Staff meetings are held via phone or Skype and students will access only language and extension lessons online, with the rest of their classes taught face-to-face.

Ms Waldron said it was important for the school's two campuses to remain connected, as Marlborough Sarina Rd would eventually be opened, allowing students to rejoin the main campus.

"Our campuses will combine for special events such as our Under 8s day, school performance tours, rewards days, sports days, and year level camps," Ms Waldron said.

"Other things like parades and tuckshop are run in parallel."

High school students face one-hour commute

While the primary school students at Swayneville are settling into their new classrooms on top of the range, high school students have no option but to make the now hour-long commute to Sarina State High School.

Sarina Range resident Katy Bodd said it was concerning to see students and parents driving for long distances on Koumala Bolingbroke Rd, which is undergoing construction work.

"It just takes so long now and I worry about the children and the bus," she said.

"[They are] very long trips down.

"I know they're the high school students and we were lucky to get the temporary school here for the little kids, but it's just the constant driving on dirt roads the gravel trucks and that it's just far too dangerous for people."

18-month time-frame

Mr Bailey said geotechnical inspections and surveying of the road were underway, but the scale of damage meant the road would be closed for up to 18 months.

"We saw two major slips and 10 minor slips there, so at this stage it's early days but we do expect it will be some considerable time," he said.

"When we had a comparable slip in Mt Morgan with cyclone Marcia two years ago, it was an 18-month timeframe.

"We're talking about major geological movements, so we're working through those as quickly as we can, but it's not going to be a short one."

Range to endure another cyclone season before fix

The 18-month time frame will leave the range vulnerable throughout another cyclone season, leaving residents concerned any recovery work could be undone by more wild weather.

Another concern is emergency response time, with ambulances taking over an hour to travel up the range and another hour again to transport patients back down.

Mackay Mayor Greg Williamson addressed Sarina Range residents at a cyclone recovery community meeting.

"We have just got to trust the fact that Main Roads have got the best engineering ability available and if they come back and tell us that it's going to be 12 months or 18 months … we'll just have to trust the fact that that's going to be the best possible solution," he said.

"This is an unbudgeted project; it's got to come out of the federal and state-funded disaster relief funds, but I'm sure we've got a long road ahead of us."