The War of the Waterfronts!

The cities of Cairns and Townsville in North Queensland, in North East Australia, have a decade-long war over who has the best waterfront. Is it the Cairns Esplanade? Or is it the Townsville Strand?

This war started with Cyclone Justin back in the late 90s. No, wait, it probably started back with World War II, because Townsville originally had naturally beautiful beaches ...

... like the unsullied Palaranda Beach
immediately to the north,

... but WWII came along and that's when the Japanese were about to invade so the Yanks came over to Townsville with shiploads of munitions and, because they needed ballast on their return, they took all the sand from the beaches immediately around the city, which they then dumped onto the mudflats in Honolulu, so that's something to take on board: Waikiki Beach is actually Townsville's beach ... and the city DID need it back, except Cyclone Justin hit and washed away the very little sand they had left, so it would have all gone anyway.

Do you know about Cyclone Justin? It was the largest and strangest cyclone the world has ever seen. It lasted for nearly a month and covered the entire Coral Sea from the coast of NQ up to Papua New Guinea and out to Bouganville and the Solomons. There was never a cyclone like it before or since and they say it was too big to actually start moving and thereby blow itself out so it just sat there, week after week, moving a tiny bit between coasts like a particularly lethargic game of pingpong, wreaking unspeakable damage over thousands of miles.

However, it also stopped the Papua New Guinea invasion of Bouganville, flooded the Rio Tinto coppermines in Bouganville therein making the invasion redundant, and wiped out the NQ war games then happening - odd timing, huh? - between the US and Australian armies, so it wasn't all bad.

However, after it was finally over, the waterfronts of all NQ towns had vanished, and so Townsville decided to use the opportunity to finally build itself a decent waterfront, buying in A$23 million worth of sand, from godonlyknowswhere. Thus, the Strand!

Me at The Strand.

It was fabulous.

But Cairns got all narky and jealous, and went all out to have a better waterfront, and thus they built the Esplanade:

The Esplanade.

The whole thing is really about which city deserves to be the capital when NQ finally becomes it's own state, which it really should be because Queensland barely knows it exists, simply taking and giving nothing back, so this whole War of the Waterfronts is wayyy political!

But here are a couple more shots to let you decide for yourself:

Funpark on The Strand

Funpark on The Esplanade.

So ... who do you think has won this war?


Hint! Hint! Hint!