Tag: daintree ferry

I was the superintendent of Mossman Hospital in 1983 as the Daintree blockade, led by Mike Berwick, was unfolding. While the Blockade was ultimately unsuccessful and a new road was carved from Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield, the Blockade led to the World Heritage listing of the Daintree Rainforest, limiting its development and totally preventing logging..Fast forward to 2020 – the year of COVID-19….The Bloomfield Track remains a windy unsealed road with steep sections. For an undisclosed reason, the new Council has re-opened the issue of building a bridge.  I don’t understand how this became a priority….

The Daintree River Crossing Options Report prepared by the Douglas Shire Council is not an economic analysis that governments would use to determine if an option is worth funding. Cost Benefit Analysis reports are used to show if a project generates a net public benefit or cost. The Cost Benefit Analysis shows: Two Ferry Option yields a $6.817 million net benefit while the Bridge Option yields a $40.644 million net cost.

A coalition of organisations made up of Douglas Shire Sustainability Group, the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre, the Queensland Conservation Council, The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation have collectively written to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to raise concerns about development threats to the Daintree Lowland Rainforest…

There is something inherently human in the practice of ritual.From the sacred rituals of spirituality and worship, to the obsessive urgings of bedtime door-lock checks, rituals bookend the important cycles in our lives and they reinforce the gravity of occasions and locations for which our high regard must never become diminished.

Questions about the legality, process and cost of Douglas Shire Council’s decision to suspend the Daintree ferry contract and to explore a bridge remain unanswered… but will naturally surface given that this was the biggest contract ever awarded by the Douglas Shire.

Learn why a proposed Daintree Bridge may saddle the Douglas Shire Council and its ratepayers with over $60 million in debt…

The Daintree River Crossing Options Assessment Report, while meeting basic Council requirements, is woefully inadequate for such an environmentally sensitive area, and will undoubtedly receive national and international scrutiny and criticism.”

This article investigates the costings and issues associated with the four bridge options presented in Douglas Shire Council’s Daintree River Crossing – Options Assessment Report released in August 2020. (see References below). According to estimates, the lowest cost bridge option would be around $53 million with the other options being considerably more. The two ferry option will only cost $2.8 million and this will be rapidly recovered through ferry charges.

At the Douglas Shire Council Meeting held Tuesday 25 August, 2020, Council made its first tentative steps in the debate with a decision to release a consultation paper on the crossing of the Daintree River.

MEDIA RELEASE BY DOUGLAS SHIRE COUNCIL Replacing the ferry service with a bridge over the Daintree River has been debated passionately in the community for…