A storm in a teacup

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This was published 12 years ago

A storm in a teacup

Calm after the storm ... cyclone Yasi inflicted minimal damage on Cairns.

Calm after the storm ... cyclone Yasi inflicted minimal damage on Cairns.Credit: Peter Braig

Natural disasters have hit tourism in north Queensland but Cairns and surrounds are open for business, says Clive Dorman.

They breed 'em tough in Queensland, the Premier, Anna Bligh, declared defiantly and a little tearfully as the state struggled with its natural disasters earlier this year. But they also breed them philosophical and optimistic.

"It's really just been a bugger of a year," says Cairns tourism pioneer Charles Woodward, who believes he can see light at the end of the tunnel after cyclone Yasi in February and the tsunami disaster in Japan, which has temporarily damaged Cairns's most important overseas tourism market.

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Yasi almost killed the region's tourism industry, even though it inflicted minimal damage on Cairns and the main north Queensland tourism centres.

Woodward's CaPTA group, the region's biggest adventure tourism operator, with wildlife parks, whitewater rafting and boat cruises among its portfolio, was ready for business as usual by February 6, three days after Yasi. But, by then, tourists had begun cancelling holidays when the Queensland government declared that three-quarters of the state had been devastated.

In fact, the nearest serious floods were near Rockhampton, 875 kilometres south of Cairns. But Cairns was abandoned by Australians and foreigner travellers.

"Everyone I've spoken to has been amazed that, no, [Cairns] hasn't been blown to smithereens," the north Queensland sales manager for CaPTA, Oliver Voss, says. "It's the perception [problem]. It's just getting people to understand that when a cyclone occurs, the effects disappear very quickly.

"When the cyclone was bearing down on Cairns, we were told there was going to be a seven-metre tidal surge, so we evacuated our families," he says. "We had such brilliant information but it had been dramatised. I think that Laurie Oakes said it had the power of a nuclear bomb. And then after that, we had Anna Bligh saying 75 per cent of Queensland had been declared a disaster zone.

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"That may have been the case but it didn't affect townships like Cairns. It didn't affect a lot of places up the coast that badly. And it scared a lot of people away.

"With that onflow of information and all that negativity, we need to look at ways that will make people aware that, yes, cyclones are bad and they do create a lot of havoc - but in concentrated areas. Everywhere else was back to normal in a few days."

It has been a decade since a cluster of jumbo jets arrived in Cairns each morning with 1000 or more Japanese holidaymakers beginning a fast lap of Australia's sights that included the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru and a Sydney shopping tour. Woodward believes that it is down from a peak of 30 planes a week from Japan to just 11.

However, he believes Cairns hotels will be full this Easter for the first time since Christmas and the Japanese will begin travelling again in greater numbers in May and June. "It's just a question of battening down and toughing it out," he says.

Clive Dorman travelled to Cairns courtesy of Jetstar.

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