12 |
NEWS
Cairns Local News
Friday, October 9, 2020
Palm Cove Spa & Beauty
Tropical Getaway Pamper Package Indulge your mind, body & soul Spoil Yourself You know you deserve it! Starting with a aromatherapy consultation Facial - body exfoliation & hydration & finished with a foot ritual Then relax afterwards while you experience the ambiance of the Coral Sea Allow yourself to be pampered whilst you enjoy a platter with champagne or herbal tea 2.5 hours Single Double
195 $ 355 $
Normally $275 Normally $550
Bookings are essential
CLEANING UP THE NORTH MORE than 230 bags of rubbish have been collected by 300 volunteers during the annual Great Northern Clean Up, which wrapped up recently. Cairns Regional Council coordinated 15 clean-up sites from Ellis Beach in the north to Goldsborough Valley in the south throughout the month of September, picking up 11,950 litres of litter, or 50 wheelie bins. Soft plastics, such as food wrappers and chip packets,
Other services Waxing for him or her Eye treatments Ear candling Pedi & Mani
0412 016 121
Shop 3, 123 Williams Esplanade, Peppers Beach Club Palm Cove, Qld www.PalmCoveSpaBeauty.com.au
were the most commonly discarded items followed by drink containers and cigarette butts. Other items that littered the region’s parks and waterways included car bodies, construction materials, children’s toys and nappies, and batteries. Cairns Mayor Bob Manning said the annual Great Northern Clean Up was an important event for the community and the environment. “This year, hundreds of
families and individuals have helped to remove 239 bags of rubbish from litter hotspots. When you add in the hard waste that was also collected, it’s more than a tonne of litter and waste removed from our parks and waterways,” said Cr Manning. “The obvious benefit of the clean ups is that we have removed a large volume of litter from the environment that might have been washed out to the reef with the wet season rains.
River silting a problem THE leaders of the Labor, LNP and Katter Australia parties have been asked to state their positions on the problem of silting of rivers and estuaries along the Great Barrier Reef, amidst growing complaints from coastal communities that their waterways have become utterly un-navigable. President of Cassowary Coast Economic Development Group, Suzanne Bassette, has made the public call following a lack of response on the issue, which she has described is a ticking economic time bomb for North Queensland. “Many coastal towns and communities have been shouldering the burden for decades now to keep the reef clean and protected from land run offs”, said Ms Bassette. “Blind Freddy can see that our rivers and estuaries have systematically
been left to silt up and ‘return to nature’ as part of this strategy. “It has reached the point you can’t even get boats into the rivers of some of our major coastal towns, and this situation is now holding our economic future to ransom” said Ms Bassette. “People down south would be truly saddened to see how communities are suffering as a consequence of successive government policies and actions - policies which are not obliged to care about people … ever! Policies which work against people making a better lives for themselves.” “What we’ve seen is over decades now, coastal communities have been forced to rely on agriculture and welfare as our major economic drivers”, said Ms Bassette. “All this, while a lucra-
tive blue economy literally sails past us, with its blue nomads, pleasure cruisers, eco-tourism, fisheries and boating services opportunities. “Eg, Innisfail is a quaint little river town where you can park a boat and literally walk to a supermarket for supplies”, said Ms Bassette. “Only now, the town’s twin rivers are reportedly silting upstream of town, and if you ask anyone in power about this debacle, you just hear the sound of crickets chirping. “Clearly, if politicians are serious about North Queensland’s wellbeing, they need to support our coast towns to open up to blue economies in ways that work in harmony with the reef. We need to be able to live in our own environment and grow our prosperity at the same time.”
