It won’t be long now until large numbers of grey nomads start heading north, but one of their favourite destinations, Cape Tribulation, remains cut off from visitors.
Back in December last year, following Cyclone Jasper, three metres of rain fell in the north Queensland area within a week, causing serious landslips and closing off Cape Tribulation Road into the town …. the only sealed road in and out of the area.
While the road was re-opened in late January to residents, service providers and emergency services during specific times, it remains out of bounds for tourists.
And that is really hurting the local economy and the estimated 200 business and services that have been affected by the closure.
Work to fix the road has been hampered by rain. PIC: Douglas Shire Council
Julian and Jackie Pagani, who run Cape Tribulation Camping, said they had cleaned up and were ready for campers but were just waiting for the road to open.
“We haven’t had any tourist trade since the cyclone so we are three months in with no income, no trade,” Ms Pagani told the ABC. “We don’t know where to go from here, we don’t know when we can reopen the doors, we don’t know what to tell our staff, we don’t know what to tell the bank.”
The ABC reports that Cape Tribulation has no mains power so, for the Paganis, powering the campground is an expense that doesn’t stop — even if the tourists do.
“[The diesel generator is] burning hundreds of litres of fuel a day because we have to keep everything on, including our sewage treatment plant,” Mr Pagani said. “After three months, it’s a lot of money without an income.”
Douglas Shire mayor Michael Kerr told Channel 9’s A Current Affair the plan was to open the road to tourists by Easter, although he said there were still challenges.
“We have our staff, the civil engineers we have doing the job up there, as much as we possibly can when it’s safe to do so,” he said.
Mr Kerr said council had allocated all the resources it could to fix the road as fast as they could, but the ‘dangerous site’ meant it had to be done ‘gently and slowly’.
In a statement, the council told news.com.au that it plans to open the road to all vehicles during daylight hours in the ‘coming weeks’.
However, it said ‘the opening date will be dependent on weather conditions and what impact rainfall has on a significant landslip at Noah Range’.
It is estimated that about $280 million has been lost in cancelled bookings across the region between December and January.
“We’ve had an horrific start to the year,” Queensland’s Tourism Minister Michael Healy tod the ABC.
The ABC says about 400,000 tourists normally visit the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation, located about a three-hour drive north of Cairns, each year.
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