Aquatic wonderland opened
A look back at significant moments in the North’s history
TOWNSVILLE’S $20 million Great Barrier Reef Wonderland has finally been unveiled in an official opening featuring plenty of pomp and ceremony.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen were on hand for the reveal of the flash new complex, which incorporates the largest live coral reef aquarium in the world, an Omnimax theatre and the first permanent branch of the Queensland Museum outside Brisbane.
As guests at the opening were told, it was also a rare example of co-operation, with federal and state governments worked in harmony with the Townsville City Council in one of only two major development projects in Queensland undertaken with Bicentennial funding.
Private enterprise in the form of the Kern Corporation was also involved, and the end result is impressive to say the least.
The Omnimax theatre is a mindspinning experience in visual hi-tech, and it uses state-of-the-art technology to create an image of unsurpassed clarity that is thrown up on a dome ceiling 17.5m in diameter.
At the aquarium, Mr Hawke called it “one of the most exciting tourist and educational facilities in Australia”, and it’s certainly an informative and very well-presented exercise, bringing an impression of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders within the reach of everyone without weather, time or cost restrictions.
It is also certain to provide an exceptional opportunity to educate the public more fully on the delicate nature of the reef.
But the unveiling didn’t go without some criticism, with some viewers seeing the aquarium as “a fish tank” and doubting its potential to be a crowd-puller in Townsville, which is a city increasingly desperate for a slice of the tourist action and hoping it will draw more than half a million visitors in its first year.
The aquarium is the brainchild of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority chairman Graeme Kelleher, a man with a mission to increase public awareness of the delicate ecology of Australia’s world wonder.
It is stocked with living corals, fish and other reef creatures, all taken from the Great Barrier Reef and relocated in a sustained living reef environment, complete with tides, currents and waves.
The reef tank is 38m long, 17m wide and holds two and a half million litres of water at high tide. All of this can be viewed through huge viewing windows and a transparent acrylic tunnel that is 20m long. The experience is incredible, and it will only become more spectacular with the development of the corals and colonies.
One can only hope that Townsville’s dreams of knocking the socks off tourists with its brand new wonderland come true.
• The Great Barrier Reef Wonderland, now known as Reef HQ, has become one of Townsville’s iconic tourism attractions and is due to undergo a four-year Federal Government-funded $26.9 million upgrade from February 2021.
The upgrade includes improvements to Reef HQ’S predator tanks, coral reef exhibit, turtle hospital and a number of back of house facilities.
Reef HQ has had more than four million visitors since it first opened, and generates an estimated $2.5 million a year and boasts 15,000 members. fish