Those few shires that don’t yet have them soon will, and they could save the life of any NSW resident, whether they hail from Carlingford or Caragabal.

During the past 10 years, rural property numbers have been assigned to properties by local councils across the majority of the State.

Several are in the process of finalising their new addressing systems, and according to the Department of Lands, only four councils are yet to start and all are expected to do so in the next eight months.

Those involved in the sometimes torturous process of defining localities and road names, ideally to the satisfaction of those who live there, say it is now vitally important everybody, whether urban or country-based, knows to quote the nearest rural address number when making an emergency call from a country area.

Coonamble Shire Council has put up its new numbers and is in the final process of having the names of new roads and localities gazetted, after some extra consultation with residents since the numbers had been put up by staff.

“We looked at using volunteers like the Lions club, but in the end we went with council staff because we needed to do it in a certain timeframe and we had to keep a handle on the project,” said staff engineer, Kaylene Atkins, who ran the project.

“The consultation with the community wasn’t all smooth.

“One reason we are revisiting the names is that, while we did the consultation to start with, it wasn’t until the signs went up that the penny dropped for some people.

“The problem is that while one person has lived on a particular road for 50 years and always known it as this and called it this, another person may have lived at the other end of the road and called it something different.”

To make things even more complicated, Ms Atkins said, the two landowners may be in different shires, and the other shire could also be in the process of assigning road names and localities.

“I don’t think the public appreciates how big a job it was,” she said.

“They basically gave me the maps and said, there you go.

“We’ve had some positive feedback from farmers, and especially their wives, but we still get the occasional one saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the property name we’ve had for 100 years’.

“At the end of the day, we can assign them an address, we can’t make them use it.”

www.theland.com.au