Friday, 23 October, 2020
NUMBER 1 OF 280 SUNSHINE COAST AGENCIES
Thinking of selling? You know who to call 12466647-SN43-20
Quarry truck issue returns to council
2 chefs: The european invasion
A bumper edition of local sport
40-page liftout Property Guide
PAGE 3
PAGES 36-37
PAGES 47-55
INSIDE
PR OP ER TY
Going global A young Sunrise Beach couple’s apparel brand has gone global, giving a voice to First Nation Australians through fashion. Proud Wiradjuri man living on Gubbi Gubbi country, Benjamin Thomson, launched the Take Pride Movement with his partner Tamika Sadler on Survival Day in 2019. The entrepreneurs are fast becoming a well-known catalyst for change in the community, after organising a local Black Lives Matter protest in June this year, aiming to close the gap between First Nation Australians and non-Indigenous Australians. Ben Thomson, Tamika Sadler and baby Iluka Thomson. Picture: ROB MACCOLL
Parks pay back By Phil Jarrat
Queensland, who, along with colleagues and co-authors Dr Sally Driml and Claudia Moreno Silva, has spent much of the past three years working on a groundbreaking study of the value of national parks to the Queensland economy. “It would be so helpful if the parks had counters,” he says. The resulting 60-page report, published this month, estimates that Queensland’s 500 parks contribute $2.64 billion in spending per
had the highest number of visitors per group. For the purposes of the study, Noosa was classified as “urban”, and according to Professor Brown, this made the visitor spend extremely difficult to “disentangle”. He says: “The main issue of studies like this is that the figures have to be robust. Too many previous studies, including a major one on the Great Barrier Reef, simply counted the expenditure of every visitor along that coast, regardless of their reasons for being there, which might be completely unrelated. In our study we were very careful to design a methodology that was acceptable to the Queensland Treasury and was specific about why you came to Noosa and would you have come if there was no park, or no access to it? So I can say with confidence that our numbers stack up.” Continued page 5 12463630-DL43-20
A new study reveals that the value of a walk in the Noosa National Park is about the equivalent of two cups of coffee ... and much more about the astounding return on investment in our parks. If Professor Richard Brown looks a little distracted as he walks briskly through Noosa National Park on his way to join the Noosa Turtles’ early morning swim at Main Beach, it’s because he’s counting heads. “Even at seven in the morning I’ll count more than 100 most days,” says the Brisbane and Sunshine Beach academic, “which helps me get a feel for the overall numbers of park users in the absence of an official counter.” This is a personal bugbear of the associate professor of economics at the University of
year and add $1.98 billion - almost 10 percent to the state’s gross tourism product. Measured against the costs of tourism management of the parks, this represents a remarkable $6.30 return on investment for every dollar spent. Noosa National Park was one of four representative sites used for the survey, conducted during 2018, with a third of the visitor interviews being conducted here. Other regions were Carnarvon, North Queensland rainforest and Outback. Although the study, funded by the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, looks at the state overall, Noosaspecific results include an average spend for overnight domestic visitors of $170 (per day per person), and while Noosa had the shortest stays (in terms of hours/minutes spent inside the park per visit) of the four regions surveyed, Queensland’s most popular National Park also
Sandy is a leader, demonstrated every day, in every way through our fires, and now COVID. As our Independent MP, she has delivered . Authorised by Sandy Bolton 1 Maximillian Road, Noosa North Shore 4565 for S.Bolton (candidate) www.sandybolton.com/ourfuture