Hervey Bay Gossip

So now’s the chance to buy that pub you always wanted

The Hervey Bay Hotel will soon be up for sale as the owners, the Reed Property Group, seek to concentrate on developments in Maroochydore.

The Hervey Bay Hotel is just one of the pubs owned by the group that will be put up for sale. The other hotels the group is offering for sale are The Grand Hotel in Gladstone and The Australian Hotel in Townsville.

Basically it’s gone

At 3pm today the Bureau of Meteorology advised that Tropical Cyclone Odette had weakened into a tropical low and no further tropical cyclone bulletins for this system will be issued.

Over the last couple of weeks while we’ve been down having coffee at Aquavue we’ve occasionally noticed a large splash in one particular spot some way out in the bay as some large fish has breached … but we never had a good look at what it was that was breaching.

Then early last week we were watching a paddler as he or she paddled across the bay. In about the same spot that we saw the breaches we noticed the paddler fall into the water. We were surprised at just how quickly they got back into their kayak and even more surprised to see them head towards the shore at a great pace.

Today, Marcus from Aquavue told us that he had been out in about the same spot late last week and come across two big Manta Rays. Manta Rays, even small ones, are big - with an average width of 6.7 metres - so it was no wonder that paddler headed for the shore at such a fast pace.

The Florida Museum of Natural History has some interesting  Manta Ray photos and details and you can find them here

… it’s still the place to be

There might be a tropical cyclone lurking over 1000km to the north east but the beach at Hervey Bay is still the place to be early on a Sunday morning.

Looking north from Aquavue at 7am this morning

At 5.40am this morning the Bureau of Meteorology advised that Tropical Cyclone Odette continued to be rated as a Category 1 and remains in a similar position to the previous reports.

Odette is expected to remain slow moving and maintain a position well east of the Queensland coast for the next two to three days. During this time it is expected to slowly intensify.

At 4.53pm today the Bureau of Meteorology advised that Tropical Cyclone Odette remained a Category 1 cyclone and at 4pm was located around 825 km east northeast of Ayr.

Tropical Cyclone Odette continues to remain almost stationary and is expected to remain slow moving for at least the next 24 hours. No gales are expected to affect the coast within the next 48 hours.

The cyclone watch for communities between Ayr and St Lawrence has now been cancelled.

I was doing a little tweaking of a website for one of our Hervey Bay clients today and, out of curiosity I typed - best computer shop Hervey Bay - into Google’s search box.

I must confess that I’ve never heard of the top listing but this one was the second listing

This business has now closed and left many unhappy customers who would like to contact the owner.

I guess it goes to show that you shouldn’t always believe Google and it also goes to show you that user ratings can definitely be fiddled.

Edit: As one reader has pointed out, the page that Google will now show you for the term I talk about here has now changed completely. And I should point out that many of the results pages in just about all the search engines are rather fluid and do change quite often.

At 11.34am the Bureau of Meteorology announced that low that was located northeast of Mackay has now developed into a Tropical Cyclone. The centre of the cyclone is approximately 780 km north east of Mackay.

Tropical Cyclone Odette is currently rated as a Category 1 cyclone with wind speeds of up to 95 km/h and they are intensifying.

A Tropical Cyclone Watch is now current for coastal and island communities between Ayr and St Lawrence.

The latests Tropical Cyclone Advice isued by the Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane, issued at 4.36am today reports that a tropical low is situated approximately 620 km northeast of Mackay.

This low, which is almost stationary is expected to form into a tropical cylone sometime Saturday night/Sunday morning. Currently wind gusts of up to 85km/h are associated with the low and they are intensifying.

Ok - so now it’s time to get out the emergency kit and start checking to see that you have everything you might need if the cyclone does develop and head down to Hervey Bay.

This coming Sunday - March 4 - is Clean Up Australia Day. Here in Hervey Bay the action starts at 7am and concludes at 11.30am.

To join the clean-up crew head down to Bill Fraser Park on The Esplanade at Torquay.