A photo of Burke Shire Mayor Ernie Camp supervising warehouse safety might not seem cutting edge but when he is doing it using hi tech virtual reality headsets it is.
Burke Shire in North West Queensland is one of several councils using tech from a Queensland company to provide innovations solutions in the Workplace Health and Safety arena.
"Council is always looking at smarter ways of doing things," the Council said on its Facebook page.
"We are part of a cutting-edge pilot for Virtual Reality Workplace Health and Safety."
It's software they and other councils like Cloncurry, Banana and Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire are working with and the hardware and software for the pilot is developed by Brisbane-based Next World Enterprises.
Next World Enterprises' founder Michael O'Reilly is impressed with the attitude of some of our more remote councils for whom necessity is the mother of invention.
"We are finding the regions more in favour of innovation than even the big cities," Mr O'Reilly said.
"It's saving our clients a lot of money. Traditional they'd have to send people away or bring in trainers costing thousands of bucks."
Instead they can now just pick up the headsets with the content already pre-loaded.
"They can do it when it's convenient and because it is so engaging and immersive it's four times faster." Mr O'Reilly said.
Mr O'Reilly said they apply virtual reality learning content.
"It is the same sort of content you'd experience at an accredited training organisation.
It's the training you'd ordinarily do in e-learning or in a classroom but instead you put on an Oculus headset and all the training is in front of your eyes.