It’s a rough old head only a mother could love, but under that big, daggy hat it’s been a fixture on Noosa’s Main Beach for more than half a century.
“Hey Bill” Watson is arguably Noosa’s most famous resident. According to students of statistics, at least 25 percent of the half billion tourists who have visited Noosa since we started counting, have been served shave ice, iced tea and coffee and mineral waters by William Watson. We might need to have another look at these numbers once those students graduate, but trust me, he’s served a hell of a lot of stuff to a hell of a lot of people for a hell of a long time.
About a decade ago, Bill began putting aside 50 cents from every drink he sold, hoping to raise $7000 to purchase a much-needed quad bike for the Police Beat coppers. It took him just over two years, but he did it. That’s 50 cents, two years, $7K. As the Americans say, go do the math.
Bill is such a master of the beach trade that he has applied for a Churchill Fellowship to travel the world and share his techniques with beach cart sellers around the great beaches of the world, while compiling an immense dossier on the subject to share with his colleagues when he gets back home to Noosa. But don’t hold your breath, it might take a while. Kuta Beach alone could involve a year’s work.
In any case, Covid-19 has killed off any chance of international travel, so the Fellowship will have to wait for a couple of years. But dreams are free, especially for two old blokes sitting in the shade on a warm Friday morning, watching the schoolies destroying their uniforms in the shorebreak.
Not much older than today’s schoolies, Bill rocked into town in 1970, slept in his car outside the National Park gates and sold oranges to the naked hordes at Tea Tree and Granite. He quickly realised that hanging on the beach flogging sustenance to surfers beat real work hands down, although from time to time he was forced to ply his trade as a quick-witted waiter at a succession of watering holes like Belmondo’s and Rio’s.
Somewhere along the way, Bill realised that a bikini-clad beauty attracted more of a crowd than a whiskery beach bum, so he started loading up his cart with visiting backpackers as well as the icy stuff down below. Queues formed whenever Bill showed up with his bevy of beach girls, and business boomed. I can hear him now, sharing this intelligence with the Kutarese cart mummas on his Churchill tour of duty: “Have you ever considered hiring a couple of Brazilian girls?”
Bill’s had good years and bad years on the beach – and in the good ones he’s always been there to help raise money for where it’s needed – but he’s never seen anything like this year. It started well enough, with a good summer despite the bushfires, the celebration of his half century on the beach in January, followed by his 70th “wake”at Rococo’s in early March … and then, disaster.
Bill’s routine is he gets up at 4.30am, feeds the chooks, walks the dogs, quaffs a Vegemite sandwich, then spends a couple of hours packing the cart. He’s usually on the beach by 7.30, ready for the second wave of arrivals. But by 9am this March morning, he was on his way back home.
“They closed the bloody beach!” he howls, still not quite believing it. “Sent us home. But I have to say, the council was very kind to give us a holiday on the lease payments. Still, there were other costs to be met and it was a bit of a struggle. And then the weather started to warm up and the crowds came back, particularly the weekends.”
So how’s it looking for summer, Bill?
“Pretty good, I’d say. Hotel bookings are way up, and we might even get the folks from down south back in the mix. They reckon there might be a bit more rain than usual, but a few drops never stopped anyone from coming to the beach. And I’ll be here, don’t worry about that. I might hang the hat up at 90, but I’ll be here until then.”
