Hervey Bay Gossip

We hear quite often that the tourism industry in Hervey Bay is in trouble. We hear quite often that the building industry in Hervey Bay is also in trouble but when you look around the town it still seems quite a prosperous place.

The reality though is quite different and last week’s decision by the Stockland Group not to by Centro Hervey Bay is a clear indication of just how bad things really are for Hervey Bay.

When a major investment falls over because an investor with the stature of the Stockland Group decides, after researching the situation, that the town can’t support a major development such as Stage 2 of Centro there’s no escaping the fact that the economy of this town is in trouble.

It appears that maybe the Centro deal is not the only one to fall over in the last month.

There’s a strong rumour that this one … just down the road from Ramada … has also fallen over

Smoke from burn-offs on Fraser Island … a passing jet … and a couple walking on the beach as the sun goes down over Point Vernon.

What more could someone with a camera ask for

A stunning sunset yesterday taken from Shelly Beach

After days of gloomy weather last week we really did hit the jackpot over the weekend. Mild sunny days were a great reminder of why this is a wonderful place to live and that weather is set to continue for most of the coming week too.

If you’re coming to Hervey Bay for the whale watching then be sure to take some time to wander down to the beach.

Scenes like this - taken early yesterday morning - are common around here.

It’s a hard life in Hervey Bay but someone has to do it

If you’re looking for the best pizza in Hervey Bay plus some great wine … or just a nice place for a quiet drink then check out Paolo’s Pizza Bar at 446 The Esplanade Hervey Bay.

You’ll get genuine Italian pizza, a fine selection of good Australian wines and friendly service too.

And if you’re not sure where 446 the Esplanade is just look for the little blue car … you really can’t miss it

Sometimes you can get so focused on the minute detail of every-day life that you forget there’s a bigger picture just waiting to be seen off the beach here in Hervey Bay.

Some people pay millions to for a view like this … thanks to the open foreshores of Hervey Bay we can enjoy it for free.

Sunset over Hervey Bay last Monday evening

If you’ve ever wondered what is done with all those plastic milk containers that you’re encouraged to recycle then here’s just one of the things that all the recycled plastic is used for.

Take a walk out along the pier at Torquay here in Hervey Bay and you’ll find that this bench has been placed there by the Fraser Coast Regional Council so that you can sit back and enjoy the scenery. A sign on the bench will tell you that it contains “the equivalent of 2100 2 litre plastick milk containers.

Sunrise after a heavy shower of rain certainly added sdome interesting hues to the photo.

More and more people in Hervey Bay are turning to the Internet to find the information that they require. Turning to the Yellow Pages when you want to find some local information is becoming a thing of the past and Google is where people are heading these days.

Clive and Kerry Scotney from the Beachside Pharmacy have been watching that trend grow and recently decided to take their business to where people were searching. But rather than just pushing their marketing message at people they decided that they wanted to bring important health information down to a local level and so they’ve become the first pharmacy in Hervey Bay to have their own website.

The website includes a growing database of important health information that can be accessed at any time of the day or night.

Toni Livesey from Total Website Management – the team that developed the site – thinks that it could be the first pharmacy website of its kind in Australia.

“We searched to see what other pharmacies were doing around Australia before we began work on this site and found some that were interested in pushing their marketing message but none that were interested in sharing important health information as Clive and Kerry do on their site.”

If you’re a tourism operator here in Hervey Bay … or rely on the tourism industry for part or all of your income … then the announcements regarding flight cutbacks coming from Qantas and Jetstar are enough to raise the stress levels a point or two.

But headlines in the online version of today’s Courier Mail like ”Virgin Blue Facing Oblivion” are just about guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. You can read the full story here. If the worse case scenario came about then there could be some very interesting times ahead for Hervey Bay.

On a winter’s day when the weather forecast for Hervey Bay is “mostly cloudy” the beach was definitely the place to be.

There were plenty of people walking on the beach on what was really a warm and pleasant morning to be out and about.

I was digging through some images to use on a tourism related website that we’re building for one of our Hervey Bay web design clients and came across this one that I took in March last year and I don’t think I’ve shared here before.

It was taken on the barge coming back from Fraser Island. We certainly do have some stunning sunsets here in Hervey Bay.