Littering swine ruin our tourism pearls
TOWNSVILLE has an amazing tourism triangle. The Strand flanked by the Casino and Jezzine Barracks all connected to the tip of our mighty monolith, Castle Hill. It’s our local tourism treasure that deserves special attention. If we don’t look after all of them they will become UN attractions.
Our Strand has received best beach awards, our Casino is getting a well deserved upgrade, Castle Hill is a quiet achiever but Jezzine Barracks has outperformed them all with international awards, despite some debate regarding the cost to complete the facility. If you had these assets in your portfolio you would polish them as proud owners and display them the best you could. They would be key attractions to allow visitors to appreciate the beauty in our city.
Then last Tuesday I read a small text to the editor telling us how they had taken visitors up the hill who were dazzled by night views, only to be disappointed when they returned the following day to reveal rubbish everywhere. The solution was to ask council to try harder. This person has raised an important issue on the standard of our attractions.
This is our place and we should have great pride in Townsville. So last Thursday I spent hours climbing the hill, walking the Strand and browsing Jezzine. The Strand was spectacular but Castle Hill failed the rubbish test and so did the $ 40 million Jezzine Barracks.
Castle Hill is littered with cigarette butts, fast food drink cups, discarded alcoholic cans, used water bottles and discarded old wooden and fibro pieces. As I walked around the western part of the hill there was toilet paper draped over the railings and, in one location, excrement. It was just as disappointing around the seaward side of the hill.
The walk around Jezzine was also substandard. Discarded bottles of whisky at one of the top lookouts surrounded intermittently by pizza boxes, disused drink containers and weedy- looking leucaena trees. I encountered more rubbish below the famous wooden walkway but with old tyres and pipes on the foreshore. This rubbish has been there for a long time. Not a good look for an international award winner.
The council solution suggested above is probably part of the answer, but it means more cost to ratepayers. The real solution is for all of us to tell the people who rubbish our attractions to BACK OFF. Deadbeat litterbugs need to stop throwing away their rubbish, making it other people’s and animals’ problems, and have some pride in the place you live. CCTV cameras need to identify offenders and make them clean their own bloody mess up.