Hervey Bay QLD

Hervey Bay exists for two reasons: it is the most popular access point to Fraser Island and, in season, it is central to the whale watching industry because large numbers of whales come to the bay to breed. Essentially a string of interconnected villages – Urangan, Torquay, Scarness, Pialba and Point Vernon – Hervey Bay sprawls along the shoreline in a series of small shopping centres and a seemingly endless run of holiday units, motels, caravan parks and flats. A true holiday suburbia.
 
Beyond whale watching, Hervey Bay’s tourist attractions include fishing, walking, water skiing and scuba diving. There is also an aquarium, an interesting historical museum and a memorial to the kanakas who worked the sugar fields in the area.
Hervey Bay has boomed since the 1980s. It was once a series of quiet and sleepy villages. It is now a city (officially proclaimed in 1984) where modern project homes have sprung up to provide accommodation for people (many from Victoria) eager to retire to the sun. The result has produced an unusual settlement where the foreshore is taken up with Caravan Parks (it once boasted that it was the “Caravan Capital of Australia”). There are shops on one side of the never-ending Esplanade, then the Caravan Parks, then a narrow hard sand beach. It is a town designed for short term holiday makers where retirees have settled permanently (sourced from the Aussie Towns website – click for more).