Paradise still looks very lost
One of NQ’S top holiday spots, Dunk Island, appeared to be bouncing back from a long hiatus, but now it seems the situation is back to square one, writes
THERE was much excitement when it was announced that Annie Cannon-brookes, wife of tech billionaire Mike Cannon-brookes, had bought Dunk Island.
The Morse Code dashes and dots coming out of Mission at the time told us that the rainforested beach retreat was back on the yellow brick road.
The old girl was back on her feet. The heart was still beating.
Billionaires, third, on the Australian Financial Review’s rich list, were Dunk’s new owners.
If you liken it to Melanesian cargo cult, the silver bird had landed and would be disgorging tourists with money to burn.
Tourist operators at Mission Beach, jaded after so many dud starts at Dunk following the trashing it received in Cyclone Yasi in 2011, popped the champagne corks in the town’s laid-back bars.
But now, a few months after the initial fanfare, this initial joy has turned to puzzlement.
Ask any of the locals knocking back coldies and pizzas at the North Mission Garage Bar’s Sunday session and the response will be more like, “we’re just hoping something happens”.
Dunk Island was the premier island destination between Townsville and Cairns.
And then along came Yasi. Right now people are reining in their expectations about what they hope might happen over on the island just four kilometres across the water.
They’ve been down this road before. Previous owners have talked a big game about what they were going to do, but in the end delivered nothing.
Annie Cannon-brookes so far hasn’t really telegraphed anything about what she wants to do with Dunk.
There has been one cryptic message from her ‘spokesperson’ who said, “Annie has purchased the island with the intent to preserve its natural beauty for years to come”.
Read into that what you like. One rumor doing the rounds at Mission is that island’s airstrip is going to be de-commissioned. If true, it raises the question: why? Wouldn’t the new owners want to fly to the island?
Nancy Lowe used to run the water taxi, taking visitors over to Dunk.
She’s been living in hope the island would fire up again ever since Yasi blew the resort into another dimension going on 13 years ago. These days she operates a raw materials business at
Previous owners have talked a big game about what they were going to do, but in the end delivered nothing
North Mission.
She’s traded turquoise waters and some of the most beautiful island beaches in the world for garden loam and gravel.
When she spoke to me she said she wanted to be positive. “I’ve been waiting and hoping for something to happen. Let’s hope these guys do something that gives a future to the Cassowary Coast,” she said.
From 1986 to 2000 Alister Pike ran fishing charters from Dunk. He’s still in the charter business, but the cashed up guests at Dunk have long gone.
For him it’s not make or break if the island does or doesn’t fire up again.
He’s in his 60s now and ready to hang up the bait bucket, but for the good of the community and for his son who might give the maritime business a shot, he’s hoping the CannonBrooke’s duo rebuild the island’s holiday infrastructure.
You get the sense at Mission that everyone is on tenterhooks, waiting to see what happens. Writer E. J. Banfield, who lived on the island in the early part of the 20th century, called Dunk “the island of dreams”.
He described it as an “unkept, unrestrained garden where the centuries gaze upon perpetual summer”.
There are unspoken fears that like Banfield, Ms Cannon-brookes might be content to just let the “centuries gaze upon perpetual summer”.
In the meantime life goes on at Mission: The locals meet in the bars for late afternoon sundowners and along the beaches from Bingil Bay to Lugger Bay, backpackers sit around bonfires playing guitars and drinking Coronas while up in the cover of the coconut trees Torresian pigeons call mournfully to the world.
Postscript: The public camping ground at The Spit on the southern end of Dunk is still open. This is a primo spot to pitch the tent.
Bring your own boat or hire one from Budget Boat Hire at Mission.
SIGN OF A MYSTERY
WHAT has happened to the sign announcing that you were on the Tom Aikens overpass between the new stadium at the Ross Island Hotel? It’s gone.
Why? Where? How? When? Who? WT#! The eagle-eyed former Member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay, spotted the space where the sign used to be.
He’s outraged and he’s a Liberal. What must the Communists think? Tom was an elected member of parliament and a closet commo, at least for a while, anyway, while it was convenient. What must the Laborites think… even though he was kicked out of the Labor Party for his drinking?
Apparently he was way too fond of a gargle on a hot day. But, according to The Australian Dictionary of Biography his expulsion had nothing to do with his drinking but more to do with the fact that the state party didn’t like Tom’s brand of socialism.
He was a bit too ‘red hot’. He found his way back into the Labor Party and was popular around Townsville for the fact he rode a pushbike and wasn’t a big noter.
Before politics he worked in the railways where he earned the nickname ‘Energy’ due to his laziness on the job.
And from there he made his way into politics where he could do even less. No flies on ol’
Tom. He was a super-colourful character and his name marking the overpass has gone. Townsville wants it back.