Hervey Bay Gossip

… do we really need any more?

Tourism Queensland has just released its Tourist Accommodation Data Sheet for the year ended June 2009 and if you’re in the tourist accommodation business on the Fraser Coast it doesn’t make for very encouraging reading.

On the Fraser Coast – that’s Hervey Bay and Maryborough – there are 94 hotels, motels, serviced apartments, holiday flats, units and houses providing 1,059,069 room nights throughout the year. The actual occupancy rate for the period covered in the data sheet was 546,764 and while that’s an increase of 0.8% on the previous 12 months it’s still only an occupancy rate of 51.6%.

While that occupancy rate generated $58 million in revenue it does leave you wondering whether we really need any more accommodation here in Hervey Bay for quite some time.

We’re currently in the midst of the storm season for Hervey Bay but unfortunately that hasn’t brought us much in the way of rain at all. This is probably the driest that many of us have ever seen this area and even though rain is forecast for later today and tomorrow we could see it become drier in the months ahead.

Currently Hervey Bay is on Level 1 Water Restrictions and that means that:

• All sprinklers, irrigation systems and soaker hoses are banned between 9am and 4pm
• Hosing of driveways and paved areas is banned at all times except where a water-efficient high-pressure cleaner (i.e. a ‘Gurney’ is used)
• All hand-held hoses in use must be fitted with a working trigger nozzle.

At 9.5o this morning the weather radar was showing some scattered showers about 200 km to the west and hopefully the forecast will be right and they’ll reach us later today.

There was even some pink clouds around early this morning once this spectacular sunrise was over.

What do you do with 25 tonnes of rotting flesh and it’s in an inaccessible area?

Well if you’re the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service you’re not going to want to do much about it at all because to move a dead whale of that size … oh and it’s about 13 metres long … is going to be very expensive.

The only problem is that 25 tonnes of dead rotting whale is really going to be on the nose and people can smell it up to 7km away and right now there are plenty of people on Fraser Island who are downwind of it.. Understandably the locals want it moved and just as understandably the QPWS want to leave it where it is because they don’t consider it to be a hazard worth moving.

If you’re thinking of moving to Hervey Bay then you may find that Hervey Bay Living will provide you with some useful insights into how things work in this town. The site is produced by Luke Fitzpatrick who recently moved to Hervey Bay with his wife and is now busy putting down roots in this great town.

You’ll find Hervey Bay Living right here

From time to time we get some rather high tides in Hervey Bay and last Thursday afternoon we had the combination of a high tide and a brisk onshore wind pushing it in even further.

Down at Shelly Beach the sand had disappeared all together and when this photo was taken the tide was still coming in,

Normally when the tide is high there’s still at least 10 metres of sand between the boat ramp and the water’s edge.

Around at Gatakers Bay at the north end of Hervey Bay the tide was in and the sun was setting …

… and if you wanted to walk your dog on the beach Rover was going to need a flotation device as well as a leash.

Unfortunately we’d picked up a new car earlier that day and I had forgotten to put my camera in the car so all these were taken with the camera in my Nokia N95 mobile phone. Detail was excellent at full-size but it fades quickly when the image is reduced to a size that can be posted here.

Over the last six to eight weeks here in Hervey Bay we’ve heard a lot about the plans Kingfisher had to move their Fraser Island boat terminal from Urangan to River Heads and dispense with the catamarans and focus all their shipping traffic to the barges. The move was supposed to take effect at the end of October but the Gossip has now heard a whisper that nothing is going to happen until February at the earliest … and possibly not even then.

It seems that someone didn’t think to get the required clearance for the increased usage River Heads from the Fraser Coast Regional Council. I wonder if the move was ever really on … the move from high-speed catamarans to slow barges with limited access for people who couldn’t handle the stairs always seemed a backward step to me.

If you’re an Optus or Vodaphone customer in Hervey Bay you will know that the mobile phone coverage is rather patchy. You can sit in the middle of the Mellory Place car park and have no signal … in our office in Luizzi Street turn the wrong way at your desk and your mobile phone call drops out … in some streets in Kawungan your signal can be excellent in front of one house and non-existent a hundred metres down the road.

So you can understand why Optus wants to improve it’s mobile coverage of Hervey Bay and to do that they plan to build a new mobile phone tower on top of the Riviera Resort down on The Esplanade. But do we really want a mobile phone tower and all the associated problems that goe with it on the roof of a tourist resort?

It seems that there are quite a few locals who might like a better phone coverage but not at the expense of a phone tower in such a densely populated area.

If you’re thinking of coming up to Hervey Bay to go whale watching then the crew from Freedom III and all the other whale watching boats want you to know that there are still plenty of whales out there in the bay.

Today Freedom III often had three to four pods in view at a time so it’s still a good time to come whale watching in Hervey Bay. You can follow this link to Freedom III’s website for more information.

Here is a link to a short video shot from Freedom III earlier this month

And if you’re looking for accommodation in Hervey Bay then follow that link to the Holiday Hervey Bay website for links to all the best accommodation in town.

Another small home-based business has opened in Hervey Bay this week. Trades Keeper brings tradies bookkeeping and admin services to Hervey Bay. So if you’re a small business and you need someone with plenty of experience to look after your books then follow the link to the people who can keep your books for you.