LNP Commits to Dredge Canals Destroyed by Yasi

SEVEN years on from Cyclone Yasi and Mick and Linda Edwards are still battling.

They lost their Port of Call Boating and Fishing Supplies business in the cyclone.

It wasn’t so much the damage to the shop, it was the damage to Cardwell.

The yachts, the big boats that used to call in to anchor at the marina, are gone. The ice and other provisions they bought at Port of Call, it all disappeared when Cyclone Yasi tore buildings apart and blew the yachts and the luxury motor cruisers out of the marina and stacked them up like Matchbox toys out on the grass.

Now the marina and that Grand Canal leading to the boat ramp are mud channels. At low tide that is all there is there, mud.

Michael and Linda’s business was stopped dead in its tracks. There were no boats so there were no sales of ice and equipment that boaties use on the high seas.

Their shop today is still filled with fishing gear. Rods and reels, lures hang on the walls. On shelves lie the specialist equipment for the boats. No one wants it. No one comes any more.

Hinchinbrook MP Andrew Cripps said an LNP government would make $4 million available from the Marine Infrastructure Fund for the dredging of the channel.

He said that once this initial dredging was done, maintenance could be taken over by Cairns-based Ports North.

Mr Cripps said the boat ramp was a public facility and should be brought back into service.

Now Mick Edwards sells fuel by appointment. The big, luxury boats won’t come back until the marina is dredged.

Locals say that is a matter for the owners of Port Hinchinbrook and not the taxpayers of Queensland.

The public channel, the one leading from the channel to the boat ramp is one, locals say, that can be dredged using the taxpayers’ dollar.

“It’s for the public. The marina is part of the private Port Hinchinbrook establishment,” one business owner said this week. The public rely on the boat ramp. It is their recreation spot. Anglers from Townsville, Cairns and the Tableland all travel there to fish the channel.

Mick says that having to sit out a turning tide in a boat stuck on mud is not a good incentive to get them back.

“Some of them get stuck,” he said. “Others put their tinny in and when they come back to get it, it’s sitting in mud and they have to wait for the tide. Once you lose them they don’t come back.”

Linda went and found another job after the cyclone. Mick battled on, refusing to believe what had happened.

He came down with post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s okay now, but still “takes the tablets”.

Mick is 65 now. Both he and Linda and are trying to salvage their lives. Cyclone Yasi is still there, looking at them every day. Mick is working with a mate who builds swimming pools. They’re building pools in Aramac, Jericho and Tennant Creek.

It is an abrupt turn in his life. They are doing what they can to stay afloat, but if the channel was dredged their lives might get back to a point close to where they were before Yasi.

Source: The Daily Telegraph