Hervey Bay Gossip

Medical support services for patients in Hervey Bay will be strengthened with a $5.3 million Clinics Building officially opened today by Health Minister Stephen Robertson.

Mr Robertson said for the first time Hervey Bay residents would be able to access health clinics at the one location.

“More than 18,000 patients are expected to use this new facility every year to attend surgical, gynaecological, antenatal, ophthalmology, oncology, renal and breast screen clinics,” he said.

“The Clinics Building at Hervey Bay Hospital is purpose built to help medical professionals to better service the Fraser Coast community.

“Enhanced services will be delivered by 35 staff based at the Clinics Building with up to 10 doctors and five nurses working on site at any one time.”

Mr Robertson said the Clinics Building included doctors’ rooms, 16 consult rooms, an ophthalmology area, nursing offices, breast screening clinic as well as administration and tele-conference areas.

“This new facility will help ensure that patients on the Fraser Coast have access to safe and quality treatment and care,” he said.

“It also reflects the Beattie Government’s strong commitment to improving health services for the growing Fraser Coast community.”

Mr Robertson said the addition of the Clinics Building was the first major extension to the Hervey Bay Hospital since it was built in 1997.

“This new clinic facility has also freed up space in Hervey Bay Hospital where renovations are currently making way for a fracture clinic facility and orthopaedic services,” he said.

“Construction was undertaken by the state’s construction arm, QBuild, and was completed in January 2006.”

QueenslandParks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) will launch a new locally built patrol vessel for the Great Sandy district at UranganHarbour, HerveyBay, tomorrow (8 July).

Environment Minister Desley Boyle said the “Bool” replaced an inflatable patrol vessel and would complement QPWS’s main patrol vessel for Great Sandy, the 10.5m Noosa Cat ‘Yeranduna’. Both vessels are based at UranganHarbour.

“The vessel will be used to conduct patrols within the soon-to-be gazetted GreatSandyMarinePark,” Ms Boyle said.

“It will be used to patrol areas including the waters from Baffle Creek to the north and south to Double Island Point. Staff will use it to service national park islands, monitor features such as coral, seagrass and dugong, and for public contact, education, and compliance patrols,” Ms Boyle said.

The Bool is a 5.9 metre aluminium centre-console vessel powered by an environmentally friendly four-stroke outboard motor.

Member for Hervey Bay Andrew McNamara said the vessel was named after FraserIsland’s Bool Creek where Matthew Flinders replenished his freshwater supplies in 1802,

“Not only does it have a local name, it is a totally local product.

“It was designed by HerveyBay naval architect, Rodney Dredge, and constructed by locally owned and operated family business PlateMaster based in Tinana, Maryborough,” Mr McNamara said.

While Hervey Bay, Maryborough, Gympie and the residents of the Mary Valley face the threat of a dam being built on the Mary River Toowoomba faces a water crises that no dams will fix.

For the people in Toowoomba the question is whether or not to use recycled water and the debate is getting very heated. Here is one youg Toowoomba residen’t view of the debate.

The town of Toowoomba lies in South East Queensland, and is currently effected by a devastating drought. This drought has emptied the dams that supply water to the city, and has split the local population in two. This is due to the local governments plan to introduce a water recycling plant, but some people fear that their health may be effected.

The Toowoomba City Council, led by Mayor Di Thorley, plans to introduce a plant which uses reverse osmosis to clean waste water. This process creates water which has a six star rating for quality (five star is drinking quality). Yet, even with overwhelming support from the state government, scientific experts, and overseas precedents, some citizens refuse to accept this new age method.

They have organized themselves into a group known as CADS, or Citizens Against Drinking Sewage. They consistently ignore all professional advice and continue to threaten Toowoomba’s only viable option to preserve its water supply.

The sole purpose of CADS is to criticise all the suggestions that the council puts forward. Rather than try to come up with possible solutions of their own, they seem to be content with making all other plans fail. With this sort of attitude, there is no way that any water saving methods will be put into practice.

Toowoomba cannot continue to wait for the rain to refill the lifesaving dams. To much water is being lost in the city itself, and there seems to be only one practical method to combat the drought.

Reverse Osmosis is used in several cities throughout the world with no health problems resulting from it. No matter what evidence is put forward to support this view, the citizens of CADS dismiss all scientific facts.

It seems that they even make up their own facts to further disrupt the council’s plans. Hormones getting into the drinking water supply, sewage leaking through the process, and all manner of viruses are being invented by this disorderly organization.

Besides, if people are really that worried about what they are drinking, perhaps they should take a look at the dams themselves. They are not the cleanest pools of water, but they serve their purpose, and the processes that clean them are sufficient.

Water is the life blood of a rural town, and Toowoomba is the hub of a series of farmlands. Without water the entire town will slowly die. There will be no water for washing, construction, landscaping and even drinking. Barriers must be put in place so that the future of Toowoomba is confirmed.

Until the citizens of the town of Toowoomba are united, there can be no solution to the water problem. The battle between CADS and the rest of the population continues. A practical application that will reduce the amount of water wasted must be implemented, and yet, it cannot until a firm decision has been made.

The future of Toowoomba is not yet certain. There will come a time when the town agrees on a single, viable option, but until that time comes, uncertainty will continue over the water problems.

Russ Egan

The Queensland Premier flew into Gympie today to make his long-awaited announcement about the Traveston Dam.

The proposed dam will not be as big as originally though and perhaps only 500 homes will need to be resumed. Key infrastructure will also be preserved.

Follow the link to read more about the Premier’s Traveston Dam Proposal.

It’s unlikely that the wittled down plan will find anymore favourable reception with the people in the Mary Valley than the original proposal did and the damage to the waters around Hervey Bay will still happen even though the dam is going to be only half the size of the original.

… the Courier Mail is running an interesting poll on their website to see whether people would be willing to accept water restrictions to save homes from being inundated.

To register your vote you need to go here and scroll down the page a little way and look for the heading ‘Latest Poll’.

Her indoors and I went out to dinner on Monday night and we had the best seats in the house.

The meal was hardly what you would call extravagant - just fish and chips from the Shelly Beach Fish Shop - but the view was priceless.

All you have to do is take the time to get out of the house and you can enjoy spectacular views just like this almost any day of the week here in Hervey Bay.

Premier Peter Beattie will be in Gympie tomorrow 5 July to announce what he intends to do to destroy the Mary River with the Traveston Dam.

You are cordially invited to be at The Pavilion, Gympie Showgrounds, Exhibition Road Gympie at 1pm to let him know just what you think of his wonderfully short-sighted plan that will have a major adverse impact on places as far away as Hervey Bay.

The death knell had sounded for two vital fuel subsidy schemes and petrol prices were set tor rise in regional and rural Queensland as a result, Premier Peter Beattie said yesterday.

Mr Beattie said as of Friday night the Howard Government had scrapped the Fuel Sales Grants Scheme and the Petroleum Products Freight Subsidy Scheme.

The Fuel Sales Grants Scheme provides a rebate of one to two cents per litre to compensate for the impact of the GST. The scheme was put in place because fuel prices in regional and rural areas are higher resulting in a higher GST charge.

The Petroleum Products Freight Subsidy Scheme provides grants to fuel companies to reduce the cost of freighting petrol products to remote areas and assists in reducing the price differential between city and country prices. If business costs go up, such as increased freight costs due to the price of fuel, then the business will need to offset that by passing on the increase to consumers.

Mr Beattie said he had been calling on the Howard Government to reverse this hard hearted decision but the pleas had obviously fallen on deaf ears.

He said the RACQ had also warned that fuel price increases would be inevitable if the schemes were scrapped.

The Queensland Government provides a 8.354 cents litre subsidy and has no plans to remove it.

The latest news on the Traveston dam is not good.

Here is the latest news from the official ant-dam website.

The Premier announced today that he will be coming to the Mary Valley sometime this week to explain why he intends to proceed with the Traveston Dam. This is one occasion where it would be good to have as many people as possible front up to meet him (a couple of thousand would be good).

Please be prepared to come to an unspecified location at short notice and contact as many friends as possible via phone trees etc.

We will try to organize a meeting where we can know the time and location in advance, but we must not be surprised if he just turns up at short notice via helicopter, much in the same way he did for the initial announcement.

This looks like the beginning of the serious fight to save the Mary River.

For more information you can log on to their website at http://www.savethemaryriver.com

All you lucky Hervey Bay residents should have received a letter from the Premier of Queensland over the weekend. If you didn’t notice it then perhaps you should all the other junk mail that arrived since Friday because we found ours mixed in with the various flyers that get delivered.

Included in that letter is a nice glossy brochure signed by the Premier and the less than lustrious Health Minister outlining the huge amounts of money they are spending to improve the hospital system.

Sadly, despite throwing lots of money at the problem the hospital system hasn’t improved much at all. Surgical waiting lists have still not been reduced according to a leaked memo written by the head of Queensland Health.

edited to remove a dead link