Hervey Bay Gossip

Construction of the long-awaited water park in Hervey Bay is about to begin and we can expect some traffic problems during construction.

The roundabout at the intersection of Main Street and The Esplanade will be turned into a T junction during construction and that means that it’s definitely a place to avoid. Traffic signs warning of delays during the construction period have already appeared.

The sight of a security guard on the main gate to Ramada’s Hervey Bay resort construction site last Tuesday night was definitely not a good sign and it has now been announced that work on the project stopped last week.

It seems that Ramada’s builder, MCI Construction has been in trouble for some time now and the ABC suggests that an administrator will be appointed today.

Ramada expects that there will only be a slight delay to their Hervey Bay project and a new builder will be appointed next week. Sub-contractors who were working on the project will have to rely on the admininistrator to recover money owed to them by MCI Construction.

For those who did not want to see coal mining resume around the local region the latest report from Access Ecominics hold some good news.

Access suggests that while Queensland’s output growth will continue above the average it’s what comes in the future that will have the greatest impact.

According to Access “the big fall in commodity prices is likely to mean many projects … may never see the light of day.”

You can read more about the Access Economic report here

If you’re thinking of selling your house here in Hervey Bay then Rain and Horne are running a seminar for vendors that should be of interest to you.

The seminar will commence at 7pm on Wednesday January 21 at 357 Esplanade Scarness. For further details you can call Rain & Horne Hervey Bay  on 4128 2188

Looking for a provider of security services in Hervey bay? A new list of security service providers has just been added to the Hervey Bay Business Directory.

While the outward signs are that Hervey Bay is enjoying a reasonable Christmas/January period some figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics are not good news.

The tourism deficit for Australia in October - the number that shows that more Australians took holidays overseas and fewer international tourists came to Australia – is the biggest in 23 years.

Sometimes you have to get up early to see some of the more spectacular sights in Hervey Bay.

This was sunrise from my office window this morning:

And a few seconds later from the same office window:

It’s summer in Hervey Bay right now and if I asked you to describe what the beach would look like you would undoubtedly think of sun and lots of people out enjoying themselves.

But there’s more to the beach in Hervey Bay than that. Let’s start at 7am last Thursday morning.

Close to the camera Beach Fitness is conducting a wor-out session … beyond the boat ramp workman are discussing something and way in the distance you can see people walking. You can see how the tide is getting higher too.

By Thursday evening things have changed. Despite the bright morning it rained on Thursday afternoon but that didn’t keep people away from the beach. There were still plenty of people out and about as evening settled in.

Friday was another day of showers punctuated by sunny gaps. By the evening the showers had gone and people were back on the beach. Here is just one of the fishermen who were wetting a line as the Fraser Island barge passes on the horizon.

Saturday morning dawned murky but that wasn’t keeping people away from the water. Every pier along the beach had plenty of fisherman looking for breakfast.

Unlike the piers the beach was empty … after all there wasn’t much beach to see as Hervey Bay experienced one of it’s highest tides in the last 12 months.

On Monday it’s going to be even higher with some suggesting a peak of 4.4 metres.

Don’t be fooled by the occasional hype you will hear from real estate agents about how good the market is at the moment because there are clear indications that it isn’t.

Yet another Hervey Bay real estate agency – Caldwell Banker – closed it’s doors this week due to poor sales and no real sign of improvement on the horizon.

Sales of new homes continue to be reasonable but the rest of the real estate market in Hervey Bay is in such a bad way that some agents haven’t sold a house in six months.

Buzz Broadband, known around the Wide Bay for it’s cheap Internet connections and cheap phone services has gone into voluntary administration. It seems that the company was being pursued by an overseas creditor.

Buzz Broadband has been around the Wide Bay for a few years now and has customers in Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. Unfortunately it now seems that those customers will now lose all access to the phone and internet services provided by the company.