Hervey Bay Gossip

Queensland Health announced yesteray that the emergency department at Maryborough Hospital would remain open for at least another fortnight.

Evidently the Minister for Silly Statements didn’t take in what he was told at his morning briefing - or maybe he skipped that all together - because, after the Queensland Health’s spokesperson had made the announcement he was still telling the press that the emergency department would close.

I think Peter is beginning to find that good help is hard to come by.

That seems to be the attitude of the Wide Bay Conservation Council who are demanding that the water from the new Paradise Dam not be used outside of the Burnett River system.

It seems that there are rumours circulating that water from the dam may be pumped to Hervey Bay and Gladstone to alleviate any possible water shortages in those areas. While it’s important to keep sufficient water flowing in the Burnett surely it’s also important to see that neighbouring population centres don’t go short of water?

At least the Premier seems to be taking a level-headed approach to the matter.

These days it’s hard to believe that Howard was once a booming coal mining town but between 1866 and 1977 that’s exactly what it was. Historians suggest that the coal mining at Howard also had a lot to do with the development of Hervey Bay with much of the coal production being shipped out from Urangan Pier.

Today there’s very little to see of what once made Howard a boom town but a photographic exhibition and artefacts housed in the Howard Museum can certainly give you some idea of what life was like in Howard back then.

The Howard Museum is housed in the Tom and Minnie Young Memorial Hall.

It’s a sad indictment on the political system in this state when the only way you can get some help from the people you elect is by embarrassing them but that’s what former patients of Hervey Bay Hospital’s orthopaedic unit had to do yesterday.

While the Premier was basking in the warmth of the good feelings he had managed to generate out of the Dr Death fiasco in Bundaberg Hervey Bay’s former patients were forced to demonstrate out in the street to try and get the Premier to listen to them.

Fortunately it worked, perhaps not quite as effectively as the former patients had hoped for, but they did manage to extract some concessions from the Premier and that is definitely better than what they had before they took their grievances to Bundaberg.

Your fearless crew took a drive to Tin Can Bay yesterday just to get away from the computers and, as luck would have it, one of the computers in our car decided to have a hissy fit and pop a couple of warning lights just as we passed the gates to Camp Kerr.

So the first thing we did when we hit Tin Can Bay was to stop at the RACQ depot and call for assistance. The service technician who arrived was friendly, helpful and very competent and had us on the road again in a very short time.

Pondering that standard of service on the drive home helped me recall the times I’ve had to call for assistance from the crew here in Hervey Bay. On each occasion they too have been friendly, helpful and very competent.

That’s the complete opposite of another service technician from another motoring organisation in another State that I had to call when a Falcon we owned decided to unprogramme the computer that ran the throttle and fuel mixtures. He was sullen, unhelpful and refused to believe that I might know how to re-programme the computer once I knew what the problem was.

So to the guys from the RACQ here in Hervey Bay and over in Tin Can Bay as well - thanks very much, it’s a real pleasure doing business with you and I learn something new every time I have to call on you guys for assistance.

6am Design has opened its doors for business at Suite 4/107 Boat Harbour Drive Pialba. This new business will specialise in business cards, flyers, brochures, printed stationary, promotional material and much more.

It boldly proclaims itself to be “the Fraser Coast’s newest creative force”.

Jack Elsegood, a former football player with Manly and Easts, is about to begin work on a $22 million development here in Hervey Bay. He’s just one of the former league players who has made good through a lot of very hard work.

You can read his story, and others as well in Millionaires Row on the Fox Sports website.

If you live on the flight path for the airport you might have wondered what the very loud propellor driven plane was that passed overhead three times yesterday morning.

For those of us who have been around them before the sound was unmistakable; Hervey Bay was being visited by an RAAF Hercules. It came round three times with two touch and goes and finally landing on the third occasion.

Here it is banking over Kawungan for it’s third approach. This particular Hercules is from No 36 Squadron based at Richmond in New South Wales.

One of these unusual forms of transport was spotted cruising through Torquay earlier this week. It’s a Segway Human Transporter - “a self-balancing personal trasnportation designed to go anywhere you want to go”. And, according to the Segway website that includes out on the golf course.

The State government would have us believe that the current shortage of doctors in hospitals here in Queensland is all the fault of the Federal government. But they fail to explain why over 700 doctors have left the hospitals because they can earn more in private practice … and in other states.

And who is responsible for their wages? The State government of course.

The Minister for Health added little to the debate when he suggested in an interview yesterday that the looming closure of the Maryborough emergency unit would not be as bad as those in other centres because the community knew that it was coming.

Am I the only one who is left wondering how on earth knowing that the unit was going to close makes the closure any better? Surely the Minister for Silly Statements must realise that such comments are completely irrelevant to everyone who lives in Maryborough and especially to those who now have to be transported long distances for emergency care.

Perhaps he doesn’t realise that, perhaps he’s so far off with the fairies that common sense is like a foreign language to him.

On the other hand I’m sure the Opposition is quite happy for him to go on opening his mouth whenever he wants to change feet.