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Festival Postponed Due to COVID-19

Today, Townsville City Council announced that NAFA (North Australia Festival of Arts) and Fringe Festival will be postponed until further notice due to COVID-19. This decision comes after The Federal Governments advice on non-essential gatherings during this time. Mayor Jenny Hill said, the real issue is we don’t know what things will look like tomorrow, let alone in four weeks, so to say when we can continue these events is still up in the air. Rather than cancelling the event altogether, Council has decided to postpone it, in hopes that as soon as numbers of infections reduce, and restrictions are taken away they can proceed with booking these events and artists and put them back on the city event calendar. “NAFA is a big part of our events calendar, which brought in 4.1 million last year as far as economic impact and we saw an increase of 8.6 percent increase in accommodation in hotels and other places. So, we are trying to bring back normality as much and as soon as possible, which is why we are postponing instead of cancelling it,” Cr. Jenny Hill explained.

If you are looking for things to do because of all the event postponements, Hill said we still have beautiful parks, beaches and walks you can go on as well as Magnetic Island which is still open. In the meantime, the mayor seemed hopeful that despite everything, and despite the restrictions, Townsville’s confirmed cases are still really low, and she urges us to stay calm as we are still operating pretty normally compared to other cities and states, and to enjoy things we still can do.

Council Prepared for Coronavirus

Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill talked today on Council’s pandemic plan and business continuity plan in response to COVID-19. Mayor Hill seemed positive that Townsville is still low risk compared to other surrounding cities, with only 2 confirmed cases out of a population of 200,000. She encouraged Townsville that the council has put in a pandemic plan, but not to panic, to be cautious. Right now the only things being talked about are how the virus will affect events coming up, such as ANZAC Day and Groovin the Moo, as well as how businesses and staff in the city will be affected. Mayor Hill said “Our role is to help protect our workforce and community and maintain essential services to the city.” Their IT team has already looked into who all could possibly work from home if needed. They are looking into how to better handle blue collared workers or orange shirt workers who still need to continue working, yet how to minimize the spread of the virus if one of these workers were to contract the virus. She said they will have more clarity on public events and whether or not they will be cancelled or postponed tomorrow, Tuesday, 17th of March. As of right now public events have a more likely chance of being cancelled starting in April and going until further notice, however private events should still be able to go on, since the people going are being filtered and monitored. With talk about cancelling events, it means hotels will have last minute gaps to fill until further notice, and with Townsville having some of the nicest winter weather, Mayor Hill talked about the idea of hosting all NRL leagues and games right here in Townsville saying that she believes we would have the capacity to host them, if that is something the league wants to look into as things further progress. Mayor Hill states, “I have every faith in our local health services, and we will continue to work in full cooperation with them,” and will keep the community updated on the impacted events as soon as possible to make sure we stay informed. 

Brave, Funny, Naughty Maritime Cats

By: Anne Rinaudo

While the many extraordinary exploits of the seafarers who mapped the world have been well documented, those of their cats have not. Cats have been indispensable pest controllers, shipmates, and mascots for sailors for thousands of years.