Tiny WA council’s viral bitumen laying video racks up 14 million views
“We thought we’d been hacked.”
That was the reaction from Shire of Moora’s chief executive Alan Leeson after the town’s humble Facebook page, which aims to provide regular information to its 2000 residents, jumped to 58,000 followers nearly over night.
The catalyst for the sudden interest?
A video uploaded by the shire in December showing how a road is surfaced.
Shot by drone, the footage on Tuesday had been viewed a staggering 14 million times and shared 361,000 times.
“We had a lot of views by Christmas, might have been about 5000 which we thought, ‘Geez that’s a lot’, but around New Year it just took off,” Mr Leeson said.
“We thought, ‘oh we’ve been hacked, but it’s all been checked out.”
The council purchased the drone which shot the footage months earlier with the intention it be used to create videos to promote the town.
“I suggested we film the work because a lot of people don’t have a perspective about how roads are bituminised… we thought it was be a good opportunity to show what we do,” he said.
“We sped the video up… the original goes for about 15 minutes.”
The footage shows a 4.9 kilometre section of road being laid on Airstrip Road – which leads to the town’s airfield.
The upgrade cost $443,000 and was funded through Roads to Recovery.
The shire’s new found fame makes them the second most ‘liked’ WA council on Facebook, second only to the City of Perth on 132,573.