Irukandji cause Four Mile Beach closure – plus more news
News in Brief
Welcome to Newsport’s News in Brief, where you can quickly read some of this week’s stories:
IRUKANDJI CLOSURE
Popular Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas has had to close this week because of Irukandji jellyfish found in the water.
North-easterly winds have brought in the jellyfish and other marine stingers and made swimming conditions high risk, forcing Four Mile as well as Palm Cove, Clifton and Kewarra beaches to close.
A man was also taken to hospital from Four Mile Beach with a suspected sting.
“We had a male patient with a suspected Irukandji sting, but turned out it wasn’t – possibly some other marine stinger - and he was sent home,” a Cairns and Hinterland Hospital Health Service spokesman said.
CRASH UPDATE
Police are continuing their investigations into a horrific double fatal motorbike-tractor accident on Cape Tribulation Road at Lower Daintree last Saturday morning.
The rider, a 64-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman both from Forest Creek died as a result of the crash.
Senior Cairns Police officer, Inspector Mark Henderson said: “Early indications in regard to that crash is that speed appears to be a factor.
“The emergency services crews who responded to that crash were confronted by terrible scenes.”
Police have renewed their appeal for any witnesses or anyone with dashcam vision of a silver motorcycle with two people on it, travelling north along Mossman Daintree Road last Saturday morning (December 10) to come forward.
SUGAR DOWN
As Mossman Sugar Mill approaches the end of the crushing season, its latest weekly report has shown sugar yields are down mainly due to weather and temperature conditions.
Last week the Mill crushed 24,456 tonnes of cane (88.7% of its seasonal target to-date) – but the sugar yield was down to 10.09 Commercial Cane Sugar (CCS), considered quite low compared to previous weeks and months.
Far Northern Milling reported on social media:
“The Commercial Cane Sugar (CCS) of a crop can vary due to the variety; age of the crop; arrowing; and moisture; nutrient; or temperature stress.
“This is an average across all growers for the week. So it will be profitable for some and not so much for others.”
POWER CUT
Wonga Beach and its surrounds was the latest Douglas area to report a power outage, going without electricity for about four hours early on Wednesday morning.
One social media poster wrote “getting a bit tropical” after waking up to find she was among 630 customers to be affected by the outage.
Ergon’s fault finder map only generically gave the cause of the outage as an ‘external factor’ with emergency repairs being carried out.
WANGETTI PHONES
Phone coverage at Wangetti Beach is back to normal after a lightning strike at a Telstra mobile base station damaged equipment and severely disrupted mobile coverage for more than a week.
Telstra Regional General Manager Rachel Cliffe updated Newsport a short time ago:
“Storm damage to our local mobile base station at Wangetti has been fixed and mobile services are back online.
“The damage was extensive and Telstra technicians worked for a number of days to get everything back up and running. We know how important connectivity is for regional communities and we thank everyone for their patience.”