Learn All About Hervey Bay - Damian Raxach Property

Learn about Hervey Bay

The City of Hervey Bay is about 240km north of Brisbane – a leisurely 3.5 hour drive up the Bruce Highway.

If you prefer to fly, Hervey Bay does have it’s own airport with direct flights to Brisbane (45 mins) Sydney (1hr 45 mins) and Melbourne (2h 30 mins)

Hervey Bay is world famous for its whale watching and natural heritage, its sub tropical climate and abundance of natural assets including the Great Sandy Straits and K’gari (Fraser Island)

Hervey Bay’s population enjoy a real quality of life, balancing work and pleasure and most will tell you they live here “for the lifestyle”.

It has become a very self-sufficient area to live in with great housing options, a great range of medical facilities, schools and further education options.

Whatever suburb you choose to live in, your commute to work will be enjoyable and time efficient, allowing you more time with family and friends, and less expense on travel and fuel.

Even if you choose to work in Maryborough, the commute is only 30 minutes! Compare that to a capital city and make the lifestyle choice.

A little bit of history..

The area called Hervey Bay – pronounced Harvey Bay, was originally named and discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770. It was named “Hervey’s Bay” after Augustus Hervey, Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Bristol and Captain Cook’s boss at that time. Captain Cook referred to it as a Bay because he did not realise at that time that Fraser Island and Australia were separate pieces of land.

In 1802 Matthew Flinders arrived and set about mapping Hervey Bay in more detail. The first European recorded as having settled in Hervey Bay was Boyle Martin in 1863 who arrived with his wife and child. He worked cutting timber and it is suggested that he was the first person to grow sugar cane in the area

In the 1870’s many Scandinavian settlers moved into the area and for a short time Hervey Bay became known as Aarlborg. At this time the area was basically used for dairy farming. In the 1880’s sugar was introduced and people were brought from the South Pacific islands to work on the sugar plantations.

In 1896 the Bay was connected to Maryborough by railway and in 1917 the Urangan Pier was completed and Urangan became an important port for the export of sugar. The attractions of the area were obvious. The fishing was good, the place was quiet, the weather excellent and the surrounding area was flat and accessible. All these factors quickly led to Maryborough businessmen taking up large waterfront blocks of land for weekend retreats. A number of villages began to develop throughout the area and were individually named: Polson’s Point which is now Point Vernon; Barilba which is now Pialba; Torquay; Urangan and Gatakers Bay.

It was not until September 1977 that the combined villages were declared the Town of Hervey Bay and the area was finally named a city in February 1984.

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