Resort town’s curse strikes
ANOTHER restaurant has fallen victim to the curse of Mission Beach in a growing line of businesses to be destroyed by fire.
Peppervine has been utterly gutted after an inferno tore through early on Friday morning, with five fire crews unable to
Its loss will hit the town hard over the coming peaktourism months – but Mission Beach is getting somewhat accustomed to restaurants going up in smoke.
One witness to Friday’s fire, who requested anonymity, said: “Another one. They’ve got a habit of burning down.”
The town was shocked in December 2017 when a fire tore through Millers Beach Bar and Grill – known as the biggest and best joint in town.
It was just four days before Christmas, and owners Michael Hannaford and Shane Battle described their loss as the “end of an era”.
“As you can imagine, we are in deep shock, and feeling sad not only for the business that
we loved and have now lost, but also for our community, who have supported the various restaurants in this location over a period of 20-plus years, including ours for the past eight years,” they said at the time.
“2017 has seen some terrible hits on our village.
“We have all experienced or been touched by loss, and this seems to us like a full stop at the bottom of the exclamation mark.”
The “terrible hits” they referred to included a raging fire just five months earlier which wrecked two popular Mission Beach restaurants.
That blaze, in July 2017, caused significant damage to the Italian Pizza Pasta House Restaurant and Cafe and Shanti Cafe next door.
Witnesses described hearing a bang before the fire, which was initially described by police at the time as suspicious, took hold.
“There has been significant damage but without insurance assessments we are not sure how extensive they are,” Mission Beach Sergeant Troy Nowitzki said at the time.
“We are still working to establish the cause of the fire and are conducting thorough and extensive investigations.
“We are taking witness statements and checking CCTV footage and using every available resource to determine what has happened.”
No charges were ever laid over the fire, and there were no indications of suspicious circumstances in any of the fires.
Shanti Cafe has reopened, but Italian Pizza Pasta House Restaurant and Cafe never did.