By Abbey Cannan
Police say the school holiday period at Teewah Beach was “chaotic“ with campgrounds hitting full capacity and close to 100 speeding fines being handed out.
The busy area requires a joint operation between Noosa Police, Sunshine Coast Road Policing Unit, Tin Can Bay Police, Rainbow Beach Police, Gympie Road Policing Unit, Maryborough Tactical Crime Squad, and Queensland Parks and Wildlife rangers.
Noosa Police officer-in-charge acting senior sergeant Troy Cavell said Noosa Police alone conducted about 200 random breath tests detected three drink drivers.
“Every weekend at Noosa North Shore is at 100 per cent capacity which is 1500 campers allowed in Teewah campgrounds and up to 2000 vehicle permits issued each day, according to National Parks website,“ he said.
“So it has been absolutely chaotic but you look at Noosa on the weekend, it was packed as well.“
Snr Sgt Cavall said the crime rate was low around Noosa these school holidays.
“In terms of stolen cars and break and enters, over the long weekend it was next to zero,“ he said.
“We didn’t get any stealing from beaches or cars, which is normal for coastal areas at peak times. So that was good for us.
“The first week of the holidays weren’t too busy and the second week, we had that bit of rain come through so that kept things fairly subdued.
“We’re still busy, attending about 180 calls for service each week.
“We have our issues on Saturday nights around the licensed premises in Hastings Street and that’s an ongoing thing that we’re trying to correct.“
Lives lost on our roads this year are on a trajectory to reach their highest number in over a decade. Two hundred lives have been lost so far this year, 14 more than this time last year.
Factors such as speed, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelts and fatigue are consistent contributors to fatal road crashes.
Snr Sgt Cavall said we were lucky that none of those deaths had occurred in the local area.
“The fatal five keep coming in as there’s a lot of the drivers on the road and sometimes the police aren’t able to stop their behaviour,“ he said.
“You can’t be everywhere at the one time and some of the responsibility has to go back to the drivers’ actions.
“If you concentrate on Noosa, we don’t get too many bad accidents.
“We’re constantly doing traffic enforcement that targets the drink drivers because there’s a fairly high rate of drink drivers around Noosa, as we have about 2000 premises that are licensed for drinking.
“Our Ubers and taxis take a lot of the drink drivers off the roads so that has made a huge difference. It has also reduced the assaults around Hastings Street as people can get a lift quite quickly, so that saves all the drunks from hanging around.“
Snr Sgt Cavall said police were gearing up for the Christmas holiday rush.
“The September school holidays are our trigger point for it to be busy every weekend until Australia Day next year,“ he said.
“We’re not sure if we’ll have Schoolies in Noosa this year, there doesn’t appear to be too many in relation to last year’s effort.
“We ask the community to continue to be careful on the roads around Noosa.“
