Cunard bypasses Brisbane for Cairns
Cunard will take Brisbane off its schedule for 2009 after a visit in February during which its passengers were forced to wade through muddy ankle-deep water at temporary facilities.
'Passengers on the superliner, the Queen Victoria, arrived to muddle ankle deep waters in Brisbane in February.'
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Instead, the company will dock at Cairns. Earlier in the year, the superliner Queen Victoria was forced to dock at the Fisherman Islands container terminal because it could not fit under the Gateway Bridge to dock at Brisbane's Portside cruise ship terminal.
Passengers were forced to wade through mud to reach buses to take them to the CBD.
Chief executive, Ann Sherry said the company had told the Queensland government a cruise ship facility was needed on the bay side of the Gateway Bridge.
"The ship's not coming in 2009 was absolutely reinforced by what happened in February," she told ABC Radio.
'In fact it's happened before and so it was really already under discussion about whether we'd come to Brisbane and the experience in February this year reinforced that we would skip Brisbane in 09."
She said the government had indicated it was prepared to look at available land with a view to consider its use as a cruise ship facility.
A report released in May by Access Economics, and commissioned by Cunard owner Carnival Australia, found international cruise liners could opt to base themselves in Asian ports if infrastructure bottlenecks at Australian ports were not cleared.
It was particularly critical of infrastructure bottlenecks in Sydney and Brisbane that will exclude larger ships using the cities altogether in coming years.
The cruise ship industry contributed $734 million to the national economy last year.
by Jeni Bone 
Ormiston, QLD
