Alwyn Poole
Began teaching in 1991. TBC, HBHS, St Cuths. Founded/led Mt Hobson MS–18 years. Co-founded SAMS and MSWA. Econs degree, Masters in Edn, tchg dip, post grad dip – sport.
I have just had the privilege of spending a week on Hamilton Island off the north Queensland Coast. It was easy to get to – Auckland-Sydney-Hamilton Island (where five significant flights arrive every day).
It is a tiny place – five kilometres long by 3.5 kilometres wide. But the airport hosts planes with up to 300 passengers and the ferry from Airlie Beach is 45 minutes.
The hotels – we stayed at the Reef View – are high quality and very well serviced.
We ate at 10 different venues – every meal and all waitstaff were of high quality.
We took two boat trips. One was to Whitehaven Beach – which was beautiful re the fish life and the monitor lizards. The other was an all-day adventure to a part of the Great Barrier Reef – where we snorkeled for four hours and had a superb time.
As a declaration of interests – I own three, very small, tourism businesses in the Bay of Islands.
My strong opinion is that NZ needs a SUN destination in the same way that Queenstown provides a winter destination and is also working hard to be an all-year round venue.
The Far North is the poorest part of NZ with appalling education, NEET, employment and social welfare stats. A few rich (and semi-rich) people go to the Bay of Islands, buy some form of property and then try and make sure no one else arrives in paradise.
Here is a summary of what Hamilton Island means to the Queensland and Australian economy.
Simeon Brown and Chris Bishop have done some good work with proposed roading improvements to the Far North.
A much more significant improvement would be to make the Kerikeri Airport fully international and have flights coming in from Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Singapore, Hong Kong – every day. In 10 years Northland could go from the poorest to the wealthiest NZ province.
This article was originally published by Education – the Absolute Best Ways.
