Right after the festive season comes the whinging season when Noosa locals complement wining and dining with whining and moaning about the state of our town during peak tourist season.
It happens every year, of course, but having (more or less) reached critical mass over the Covid summers and maintained it, bettered it or worsened it – depending on who you talk to – these past couple of weeks, locals are not just maintaining the rage, they are taking it next level.
The fact that we had good surf and sunny weather, albeit very windy, over the holidays only compounded what was always going to be a very congested period.
Predictably, social media groaned under the weight of resentment of the evil tourist hordes while coulda-woulda-shoulda so-called solutions got loonier by the letter.
Bridges are big this year – not just one to the North Shore, which we’ll get to later, but the hoary old chestnut about a full-scale bridge joining the Woods and the Sound again and again, and if not a full-scale bridge maybe a pedestrian walkway with everyone parking along Noosa Parade.
Yeah, nah, let’s forget that one.
Of course, while most of the solutions floated on Facebook and elsewhere are old and have more rejection slips than a freelance writer (and I ought to know), by no means all of them are silly.
One Hastings Street worker suggested a free ferry service for workers in the precinct, which seems reasonable. There have been other sensible ideas, I’m sure, but right now I can’t find them.
What I did find, with a bit of Googling, was that the post-festive search for congestion solutions has been going on for decades, and sometimes it throws up a solid argument, such as last January’s contribution from thinking local Judy Barrass, who posited on the Open Noosa website that it was time to get the big stick out to enforce behavioural change.
She wrote: “It seems to me our council has played around with the idea of bike lanes and free buses for long enough. Behaviour is not changing, so it’s time to consider compulsion. If you want cars to stay away from the beach precinct, make it harder for them, make it so darn hard the alternatives look better. Paid parking is not going to do it. What we need is to not use the Lions Park, restrict parking elsewhere in the precinct, and have a big sign at the entrance to Noosa Drive/Parade or preferably at the entrance to Noosa saying beach parking full – like they do at the State Library, or the Art Gallery, or The Ekka. And then give viable travel alternatives. It would be chaotic for a while, but I think it would end up making Noosa a better place to live and to visit.”
Hear, hear Judy, but before you start using that big stick, let’s look at whether any locals are bussing or biking to the beach voluntarily.
Regarding the former, I had to look no further than our surfing Councillor Tom Wegener, who used the free bus loop during the Christmas/New Year swell event and won’t shut up about it, posting on Noosa Community Notice Board: “I just took a ride on the Free Noosa Loop Bus at high tourist time. It was pleasant, air-conditioned, nice music and full.
“The bus was electric as well.
“I was happy to see a family with a wagon with all the beach gear welcomed onboard. This family had parked at the footy grounds which had lots of free space. At the highest traffic time, and with the Lion’s Park filled, the loop took a half hour.
“This is a result of a visionary, ambitious transport strategy and it is working!”
Eager to see the visionary strategy at work, and also to make sure he was actually getting on the bus, I arranged to meet Tom at the AFL ground before we had a surf. And yes, there were plenty of parking spots and yes, he and wife Margie got on the bus. In fact Tom told me that on one of the swell’s peak days, he drove to First Point, dropped his board off, drove back to the AFL grounds, parked his car, caught the bus on its next loop, grabbed his board and paddled out, and was still in the line-up 20 minutes ahead of his mate, who had driven around the Hastings Street precinct for more than an hour looking for a park.
While thorough analysis of Tom’s test suggests that he may have been simultaneously if inadvertently part of the problem as well as part of the solution, it also points to a slight flaw in the uptake of the free bus system, which is that longboarders, who make up at least half of the surfers using the Noosa World Surfing Reserve, can’t take their boards on the bus.
A simple solution would be a board trailer or cage towed behind.
Maybe next season?
Whether many locals used the free bus is a matter for conjecture, but one driver I spoke to assured me that the service carried 10,000 people over Christmas/New Year week. It will be interesting to see the official figures.
Meanwhile, I can report that plenty of locals are taking to e-bikes, scooters and mopeds to get to the surf, because I’m one of them.
Having dismissed the trusty e-bike as too dangerous for surfboard transport, I am the proud owner of a matt black Fonz Arthur model e-moped with custom board rack. And I love it!
Yes, scooter parks are sometimes scarce, but compared to finding a car park, it’s a breeze.
Finally, let’s get back to that North Shore bridge idea, which gets a run every time the ferry queue stretches beyond Moorindil Street and through Tewantin village, which it did on a couple of occasions over the holidays.
The suggestion this season is that such a bridge would be for the use of North Shore residents and a few permit holders.
Wait, what?
Dream on folks, there will be no bridge and before we know it whingeing season will be over and we’ll all be back at work.
