Living

Location… location… location

  • Conveniently located within only a few kilometres of extensive business and shopping facilities and services on Main Street and Boat Harbour Drive, in central Hervey Bay
  • Supermarket and convenience stores on Maryborough-Hervey Bay Road, in walking distance of Kingfisher Lakes.
  • Educational facilities including primary and secondary schools, TAFE college and University are close by
  • 5 minutes to beaches and Esplanade restaurants
  • Hervey Bay Golf and Country Club – only 500 metres
  • 10 minutes to Boat Harbour with access to Fraser Island, fishing and whale watching.
  • Signalised access with the main road at the Fairway Drive intersection
  • Direct access to Maryborough and the Bruce Highway

For more information on Hervey Bay visit the City Council's website: www.herveybay.qld.gov.au

Time to Skidaddle

An adrenalin-packed jet ski run gives a different view of Hervey Bay

Sally Macmillan, roving writer ESCAPE

There is seemingly nothing ahead of us here in the Great Sandy Strait but scudding cloud and gleaming glassing water. Ben Suddaby, our guide, knows better. He powers his red monster away from Fraser Island's western flank, beckoning us to follow.

Aboard Black Betty, my nifty jetski, I throttle up to starboard as my fellow tour mates, Sydney couple Kristen and James Brooks, turn up the revs on their Silver Shadow on Ben's portside.

Traversing this vast open waterway is a high-powered adrenalin rush, then, suddenly on the horizon, there's a mess of masts and a sliver of what appears to be a mirage behind them. But this is no mirage, it's Pelican Banks, a substantial sandy cay out in the middle of nowhere. It's a sandbar that never disappears, but at low tide it appears immense at close range. There are no pelicans about, but plenty of locals and visitors snorkeling and picknicking as children run free with their dogs.

We cruise into this yachtie and tinny mecca for a swim and rest on the beach. We gaze back over to Moon Point on Fraser, out to boats bobbing on the strait's artificial reef (one of the biggest in the world, and still evolving) and, in the distance, the sweeping foreshores of Hervey Bay. The bay is where we began our Aquavue adventure: a three-hour jetski run that takes us past the foreshores, piers and jetties; around Round, Big Woody and Little Woody islands; over to Kingfisher Bay and up Fraser's western flank of bays, beaches and inlets; out to Pelican Banks and return.

Big Woody Island has two timber frame lighthouses, one still in fairly good condition with a lighthouse keeper's cottage, and a dubious claim to fame. In the mid-1800s the Acclimatisation Society, which was all for bringing in exotica to “enrich” the local fauna, dumped two clutches of rabbits here. They were meant to stay island-bound, but boatie folk so fell in love with the cute critters that they took them home to the mainland. We all know what happened from there.

You won't run into any rabbits here today, for they died out from myxomatosis in 1952.

Back at Aquavue Café Watersports on popular Torquay Beach, the Brooks retrieve their children, Jameson, 4, and Sienna, 2, pack up after their five-day Hervey Bay stopover and resume their year-long SUV journey around Australia. “That's the beauty of this kind of slo-mo travel,” says Kristen. “You get to stop in all these fascinating places and sample what's on offer.”

Hervey Bay, bordered by 40km of beaches, is an aquatic playground. The usually calm waters, sheltered by Fraser Island, are home to birds, dolphins, turtles and dugongs as well as being a nursery or migratory humpback whales from mid-July to early November.

Here on Torquay Beach, Larry and Melinda Burch's Aquavue venture is a local eatery drawcard and whale-spotting area, as well as being the hub for all beach and watersports. Larry, an erstwhile NSW public servant, and Melinda hit town nearly five years back with another café down the foreshore strip. They've started this venture pretty much from scratch. Today, Aquavue's many arms employ 32 staff, including six to eight teenagers who work after school and at weekends.

Hervey Bay sprawls along the Queensland coast and inland, stretching from Gatakers Bay to River Heads, taking in Point Vernon, Pialba, Scarness, Torquay and Urangan, all linked by the 40km of beaches.

There are swathes of parks and gardens, including Hervey Bay Botanic Gardens with a 20,000-plant orchid house, and the 26ha Great Sandy Region Botanic Gardens at Urangan, which grow out of 6000-year-old sand dunes. Urangan is a fishing-boatie hub, boasting the 1817, 868m jetty, the marina precinct, which is undergoing an $820-million expansion, and accommodation from caravan parks to apartments.

We are staying at the five-star Akama, overlooking the marina and boat club, with one, two, three-bedroom and penthouse apartments. Visitors can stroll to the marina's Boat Club ($2.50 for a month-long temporary membership), cafes and restaurants; take a short drive to beachside strips; or make use of the one-stop takeaway courier who'll bring in any of the area's restaurant offerings as well as picking up newspaper and chemist needs.

For anything else – free tour bookings, restaurant reservations, car and bike hire, airport transfers, in-house massage, child-minding and food hampers – managers Matt and Pia Bysher will help.

The writer was a guest of Tourism Queensland.
Used with the writer's permission


Main Street and Boat Harbour Drive, in central Hervey Bay Hervey Bay Location