Hervey Bay Gossip

Tomorrow it’s election day here in Hervey Bay. We’re faced with the task of electing councillors to the Fraser Coast Regional Council who will truly represent us instead of merely rubberstamping every development application that appears before them.

I suppose like a few other Hervey Bay bloggers I should be giving some clues on who to vote for but I’m not even going to touch that today. Instead I’m boing to give you a to something that is completely unrelated to elections, councillors, and crappy newspapers that as one-eyed as Lord Nelson.

What you will find at the other end of this link will really amaze you.

The opening of Big W in Hervey Bay on Monday was certainly a big event and drew lots of happy shoppers to snap up the bargains but not everyone was happy.

It seems that many of those happy shoppers took up car parking spaces that belong to the RSL and the RSL suffered quite a drop in patronage.

I wonder how many times that’s going to happen throughout the year and I wonder if the number of car parking spaces that the developers were required to provide was reduced by Council. It’s not the first time that the number of parking spots required in that general area has been reduced to keep a developer happy.

Sometimes it’s a wise thing not to crow too loudly when you score a victory - especially when you confuse winning a single battle with winning the entire war. The Chronicle certainly made a lot of noise on Saturday about the demise of Strewth but perhaps all that noise might have been just a little premature.

Strewth may have gone but in it’s place there are now two more and a well-established blog from Maryborough has also taken up the cudgels in the fight for a little transparency in local government in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast.

Not only do we have Strewth Reloaded as was mentioned here on Saturday but we also have Bring Back Strewth and Perspective so Nancy (and your mates) if you can’t beat ‘em why not be bold … be brave … even be a just a little fair dinkum and join in the conversation. Start adding your comments to those blogs and be prepared to defend what you seem to consider to be your god-given right to develop Hervey Bay any way you see fit!

Now that shouldn’t be too hard should it Nancy? After all you are a professional journalist so you should be able to run rings round the riff-raff who post on those blogs that you dislike with such intensity.

Sadly, if the blaring headlines on today’s Fraser Coast Chronicle is anything to go by Strewth definitely has gone … but perhaps not quite as far as the Chronicle would have you believe.

You see nothing goes away for ever on the Internet and someone has take the time to resurrect much of Strewth from the various pages of Strewth that Google cached and you can find it at Strewth Reloaded according to an anonymous email we received overnight.

It was interesting to watch the impact that Strewth had on various aspects of life here in Hervey Bay. Those who were opposed to it were very careful to rubbish it without actually pointing people to it and some of those suggested that Strewth was nothing for them to worry about at all.

However if Strewth was so insignificant then why is the front page of today’s Chronicle emblazoned with the message that Strewth has gone for good? I’ve seen smaller headlines announcing a war that what the Chronicle used to announce the demise of Strewth.

Strewth might be gone but I doubt that that’s the last we’ll see of real citizen journalism here in Hervey Bay and on the Fraser Coast.

If your one of the many people here in Hervey Bay - and in the surrounding districts - who stop by to read Strewth then this is what you may have seen this morning:

Strewth was certainly online late yesterday afternoon and had even posted some new moderated comments but now it seems to have gone. Hopefully this is only a technical glitch because there’s no doubt that we need Strewth to help us make informed decisions about which candidates to vote for in the upcoming elections for the new Fraser Coast Regional Council.

Qantaslink has announced that two return services on the Brisbane to Hervey Bay route will be axed due to pilot shortages. At least we haven’t lost all our services like Maryborough has.

You can read the full story here

Blogs have been around the Internet for several years now and some are very well-known around the world and have a considerable impact on the people who read them and the subjects that they deal with. But blogs that deal with life at a local level are perhaps less well-known and certainly don’t have the same impact.

For sometime now Strewth has been seeking to have an impact on life here in Hervey Bay by exposing what its author and supporters consider to be the poor management of local resouces by our elected representatives on Hervey Bay City Council. But how effective has that impact been?

Well there’s no doubt that Strewth has certainly ruffled some feathers and our current Mayor and the local paper have had something to say about it … but at the same time they’ve been careful not to refer to it by name. Perhaps they thought that they needed to attack the credibility of Strewth without adding to its impact by actually naming it so people who didn’t know about it couldn’t find it.

Despite that the reach and impact of Strewth has been growing and now even people who might not otherwise read a local blog are reading Strewth. I was talking to a candidate for the upcoming Fraser Coast Regional Council elections last night and he mentioned that he is now reading Strewth so that he can see what the important issues for electors are going to be at those elections. He also wants to see both sides of the various issues that he will be confronted with if elected.

When you think about it that goes to show you just how important Strewth is becoming to Hervey Bay. With only word-of-mouth marketing Strewth has become required reading for people who would never have thought of reading a blog before.

I’m not sure that there are many - if any - other local issue blogs that could claim to have such an impact on their communities in the way that Strewth is having an impact on Hervey Bay.

Thanks to the recent rain Hervey Bay residents can now do some outside cleaning from February 23 right through to March 2.

For the coming week residents will be able to used their hand-held hoses to clean houses, paved areas, cars, boats etc.

Nominations have now closed for the Fraser Coast Regional Council and Strewth has a full list of the candidates who will be standing for election next month.

You can find that list here.

Sadly the list of Mayoral Candidates is not all that impressive.

At 12.55pm today the Weather Bureau issued for a severe weather warning for parts of the Queensland coast including Fraser Island and Hervey Bay.

Synoptic situation: A strong ridge lies along the Queensland coast south of an active monsoon trough with a low centre 100 km northeast of Townsville. Reorganisation of the monsoon trough should result in a deepening low being located 550 km east of Proserpine by 4am Tuesday.

Heavy rainfall leading to flash flooding is likely in the northern Central Coast and Whitsundays district. A band of heavy rain currently lies through the Whitsundays and inland to near Proserpine and Laguna Quays. Heavy rainfall in this area is expected to persist through the afternoon.

Damaging wind gusts to 90 km/h are possible about the exposed coast and islands in the Central Coast and Whitsundays and extending down to Fraser Island and northern parts of Hervey Bay by Tuesday morning.

Dangerous wave conditions are expected about exposed areas of the Central Coast and offshore islands and should extend down to the east Coast of Fraser Island by Tuesday morning and down to Point Danger late Tuesday. High tides over the next few days will result in waves running up over levels exceeding the highest tides of the year in areas exposed to the open ocean causing beach erosion.

The State Emergency Service advises that people in the affected area should:

- secure loose outdoor items.
- take shelter, indoors if possible, and never under trees.
- beware of fallen trees and powerlines.
- avoid driving, walking or riding through flood waters.
- keep away from the waters edge in beaches exposed to the large waves.