Palm Cove News

JULY, 2001

Coachhouse development

reduced

Wet weddings

UNDERWATER weddings on the reef are becoming popular, Amphora St businessman Gerhard Beulke says.

Gerhard, who runs palmcoveonline.com website attracting mainly German-speaking tourists to Palm Cove, said the weddings were for scuba divers who wanted something different.

"Last month's wedding was for Reef House guests Antje and Rene Schiemann who tied the knot at 13 metres on Thetford Reef. The six-person wedding party wore traditional clothes underwater; the celebrant had a special microphone and speakers attached to the side of their masks," he said.

Despite the masks, the happy couple managed the obligatory kiss.

"During the ceremony, the party was surrounded by lots of fish," best man Gerhard said. "Perhaps they wanted a wedding, too!"

Gerhard and wife Nikki also promote businesses with website design and hosting, software solutions, language translations, and PC repairs.

FOLLOWING public objections in April, the proposed shopping centre at the top of Vievers Road has been shortened from seven shops to three, one of which will be the existing real estate office.

Only two of the three vacant blocks will be used; the other will be landscaped.

Councillor Sno Bonneau announced the changes at a public meeting of 40 people at Palm Cove Tavern on July 2.

City Assessment Manager Brendan Nelson from Cairns City Council and Peter MacNamara, engineer from Main Roads, spoke at the meeting. Mr Nelson said he believed the two shops might be a doctor's surgery and a Chinese takeaway.The Coachhouse Restaurant will be extended

and updated and the existing real estate office demolished as before.

"Council is about to vote on the proposed development," he said. "Any objections must be lodged immediately with council in writing." Residents were told that a drive-in establishment such as McDonald's could not be approved on such a small piece of land.

Mr Macnamara displayed a Main Roads plan for a new main entrance to Palm Cove. This would turn off the highway opposite Wild World, through presently undeveloped land, over a bridge to be built across the creek, and joining up with Triton St (behind Angsana Resort.) He said this road and bridge could happen "very soon". Eventually , Amphora St or Oliva St would be extended to Cedar Road to take through traffic from Triton St, he said.

Phone box flattened

THE phone box on the esplanade at the bottom of Cedar Rd was wiped out at 7.30pm June 25th when an 18 year-old driver negotiated the roundabout the wrong way, became airborne, and lost control.

Caravan park caretaker Geof Davis said there was nothing left standing.

"It was absolutely flattened. A park visitor had just left the box and was only 20 paces away when it happened. She was a very lucky lady," he said.

The driver admitted to police he was doing 80 kph, "but it may have been 100."
Telstra replaced the box the very next day. The lady has since departed Palm Cove.

"Big band"

music Sunday

THERE will be big band music in front of Palm Cove Surf Club on Sunday next July 8th between 11.30 and 1.00pm.

Top Sydney-based Leichhardt Brass Band will combine with Cairns Brass Band in a free concert. Graham Barratt, a local band member, said: "They might pass the hat around for funds for the combined lifesavers and bands."

The Leichhardt Band is here to perform on the city esplanade on Monday for a ceremony to open part of the esplanade project.

Editorial

THIS newsletter derives its news mainly from Cairns Post, The Sun, Sno Bonneau's Northern News, the post office and sundry other locals.

Here is something from Bill Bryson's recent book Down Under. He has met up with a fellow Englishman , Allan, and they decide to hire a four-wheel drive. They ask the hire car operator for directions to Palm Cove.

He gives it and adds: "Palm Cove is real nice. You'll like it." Bryson wrote :

And he was right. Palm Cove was lovely - really quite astonishingly so. It was a purpose-built village inserted with some care into a stetch of tropical luxuriance beside a curving bay. On one side of a beachside road stood low-rise hotels and apartments, a few cottages and a scattering of bars, restaurants and shops, all discreetly obscured by palms, spreading fronds and flowering vines, and on the other was a palm-lined walk overlooking a smooth, golden beach ad the sea.

Our hotel was, in everything but name, setting and price, a motel, but it was friendly and overlooked the sea. We claimed our

rooms, then went for a walk along the beach.

Bryson then scares the daylights out of Allan by telling him, in the most graphic way, all about deadly stingers, stone fish, crocodiles, taipans, cone shellfish, giant spiders, the blue-ringed octopus, even the giant cassowary with a razor claw on each foot that will slice you open. Allan, to whom all this is new, says :

"So you're telling me that if I waded into the water now I would die?"

"In the most wretched and abject agony known to man," I replied.

"Jesus," he muttered.

A few other laughs are to be had regarding the hapless Allan as he learns about the delights of tropical North Queensland.

Very funny, Bill, and thanks for the publicity. But then again, was Bryson really doing us a disservice? Perhaps he was appealing to the adventurous nature of tourists, you know, like : "Let's go somewhere dangerous."

They do say there's no bad publicity.

Beach forecast

Local jet-ski operator Russell Struckel now gives beach and weather conditions on 4CA AM every Saturday at 9.15am.

Lost cat

Robyn & David Wilson's blue-eyed silver--grey Siamese cat is still absent from 11 Talpa Close and is dearly missed. 4059 0295

Published by Jerry Dukes, 52Terebra St Palm

Cove 4879. Ph 40591610; Fax 40590058

Email : jdukes@ozemail.com.au