WHEN the late comedian Spike Milligan referred to Woy Woy as the world’s largest above-ground cemetery, everyone chuckled. But amid the laughter, Mid-North Coasters would have been wise to catch that glimpse in the mirror.

If we had, we might have spotted a shock of grey, perhaps even euphemistically a full head of platinum blonde.

Parodied and all, Woy Woy faces a set of problems every bit shared by the Mid-North Coast - steady population growth and infrastructure battling to keep apace.

In fact, given its proximity to the resource treasure chest of the Greater Sydney Basin, Woy Woy may be in a better place.

The Mid-North Coast already has a substantial aged population, and it’s one that is expected to balloon considerably as more and more retirees upstumps in Sydney and make the sea-change north.

Given the high number of aged residents, it is understandable many have a predilection to think “in the now”.

Yet, it’s that intractable attitude - “I’m still buying green bananas” - that’s brought the coast to where it is. Nambucca Shire mayor Rhonda Hoban, a self-described farmer’s wife from the rolling green hills of Newee Creek, blames a lack of vision for many of the current challenges.

“In an ideal world I would like to be able to employ the appropriate people and do some long-term planning and ensure that development is appropriate and in the right sites,” Cr Hoban said.

And this from a leader of a small community lauded for its forward thinking with the commissioning of an off-river water storage at Bowraville - the first major dam constructed in Australia for decades.

“We’ve secured our water supply for 2050 but we continue to work on plans for beyond 2050,” she said. “We can’t take our eye off the ball. We have to be thinking now about water supply for 2070 and 2100, because those big projects take that kind of planning and that length of time.

“That was one of the issues that we were faced with. Because of, dare I say, inadequate planning in the past, it makes the job harder now.”

The infrastructure challenges facing the coast are clear: health, aged care, roads, bridges, coastal erosion, communication and water supply.

Don Page, a former Minister for the North Coast who retired at the March state election after a long and distinguished career, has as good a handle as anyone on the hurdles ahead.

“Typically on the North Coast we have 25 per cent more people over 65 than the state average, so you need to have more health services because people over the age of 65 typically use about four times as many health services as younger people do,” Mr Page said.

‘The’ infrastructure project on the coast is the new Pacific Highway - a dual carriageway from Hexham to the Queensland border and now set for completion by the end of the decade.

It’s been something that local communities have long pined for, but as the road pavement rolls out, it’s brought both salutations and gnashing of teeth as towns have been bypassed.

Some have peddled doom and gloom, clinging to the umbilical cord of highway traffic, while others, like Urunga Mylestom Chamber of Commerce president Stephen Allan, look a little further ahead.

When Urunga - a notorious accident black spot on the highway - is bypassed, Mr Allan said there will be some short-term pain for businesses located on the former main drag.

But the upside, he said, will be a town no longer bisected by one of the nation’s busiest and deadliest roads - and an improved character of life in the picturesque seaside village.

And the new motorway will drip with opportunity for business.

“I’d like to see some more accommodation options for tourists and there’ll be some land that’s currentlysitting on the highway that is more attractive for that - once the highway is no longer there,” Mr Allan said. “And in the Raleigh area - being very close to an interchange on the new highway - there’s an opportunity for some sort of expansion of the industrial estate.”

The irony though of a spanking new arterial girt by rotting timber bridges on the surrounding back roads is not lost on Cr Hoban. She fears the situation for small shires such as Nambucca will be even more bleak when councils become the financial custodians of all the bridges on the old highway, when it transitions from a ‘State’ to a ‘local’ road.

“Our council and a lot of coastal councils are facing the handover of the old Pacific Highway and in our case we’ll have about 10 per cent more road pavement and bridges to look after,” Cr Hoban said. “In the Nambucca Shire we’re very disadvantaged because proportionally the number of bridges that we are going to get out of the old highway is an awful lot more per capita than anywhere else.”

Like the highway, the National Broadband Network is also seen as something of a dual-edged sword on the Mid-North Coast.

Both Mr Page and Cr Hoban say high speed broadband has the potential to revolutionise the way of doing business in the region, while others have questioned the cost and slow rollout, and noted that things such as mobile phone reception in many parts of the coast is still well shy of par.

“The NBN in our area is probably the key thing that’s holding back business growth and development. The inability to process information quickly and efficiently is a major problem,” Cr Hoban said. “I regularly have comments from businesses who struggle because they need to download plans or specifications for manufacturing and that sort of thing and the internet network that we have now just can’t cope.”

Mr Page, the grandson of Australia’s 11th Prime Minister, Sir Earle Page, said the state government had formulated a detailed 10-year plan after it swept into office in 2011 - but a broader, longer term ambition was still relevant for the North Coast.

“You need to have a long-term vision and you need to have shorter plans along with some benchmarks - otherwise you just kind of have an airy-fairy idea in your head,” he said.

The former Ballina MP said coastal towns with regional airports were well placed to grow and prosper in the 21st century.

The investment in hubs at Ballina, Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie had, he said, proven fundamental to the growth of those centres.

“It’s meant that people can access our area so much more readily, from a tourist point of view. It also means that highly educated people can live in our region and still work in Sydney because air services are so good,” Mr Page said.