Welcome to Hervey Bay!
Hervey Bay is a string of beachside towns located in southeast Queensland, around 5 hours drive north of Brisbane. Hervey Bay is home to many retired people. Its main attraction is an 868-meter-long pier that extends into the ocean.
The town (population approximately 50,000 and growing fast) is a centre for whale watching. People flock to Hervey Bay every Whale season, which starts in late July and goes through to early November. It is also a gateway to Fraser Island and the southern Great Barrier Reef.
It has fantastic weather and consequently draws 'sea-changers', backpackers, and those who don't like living in houses. Its offshore protection provides beaches almost free from waves.
The large bay is formed by Fraser Island and the coast. Hervey Bay is not so much a single town, as a few seaside towns merged along the bay, Urangan, Torquay, Scarness, Pialba, and Point Vernon each have their own shopping precinct, parks, and playgrounds.
The area has a mild, sub-tropical climate with an average of 30 °C (86 °F) in summer and 23 °C (73 °F) in winter. The coast is predominantly affected by the southeast trade winds which keep a cool breeze throughout the summer.
Hervey Bay was discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770 while he was travelling the east coast of Australia. He wrongly assumed that Fraser Island was joined to the Australian mainland and the sheltered waters behind it were a bay. The waters of the Great Sandy Strait are very shallow and he did not proceed far enough south to find the passage between Fraser Island and the coast. He named the bay "Hervey's Bay" after Lord Augustus Hervey an admiral of the Blue, the Earl of Bristol, and Captain Cook's boss.
Hervey Bay is a small city on the coast of the Fraser Coast Region of Queensland, Australia. The city is situated approximately 290 kilometres (180 mi) or 3½ hours' highway drive north of the state capital, Brisbane. It is located on the bay of the same name open to the Coral Sea between the Queensland mainland and nearby Fraser Island (also known as K'Gari and Gari). The local economy relies on tourism which is based primarily around whale watching in Platypus Bay to the north, ferry access to Fraser Island, accessible recreational fishing and boating and the natural north facing, calm beaches with wide undeveloped foreshore zones. In October 2019, Hervey Bay was named the First Whale Heritage Site in the world by the World Cetacean Alliance, for its commitment to and practices of sustainable whale and dolphin watching. A 2010 study by Deakin University showed that people on the Fraser Coast area including Hervey Bay, were the happiest in Australia. By June 2018, there were 54,674 people in Hervey Bay, having grown by an annual average of 1.31% year-on-year over the preceding five years.