Shire decides its preferred route for final Wangetti Trail section
Douglas transport
The location of Douglas Shire Council’s preferred final route of the section of the Wangetti Trail from the Mowbray River to Port Douglas has now been decided.
But the council is waiting on the State Government Tourism Department (DETSI) to finalise its proposed trail alignment, which crosses the Mowbray River at the bridge near Captain Cook Highway and heads into Port Douglas from there, according to the DSC annual report released this week.
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Whether or not DETSI, or Tourism Minister Andrew Powell, will sign off on DSC’s preferred route is as yet unknown.
The council’s decision comes after Minister Powell said last month he was still working with the council to decide where the final section of the trail from the river to Port Douglas would go.
“There’s a couple of options,” he said.
The Bump Track gets you down to the headwaters of the Mowbray River, and from there the track could either go across Mowbray River bridge or go cross country into Port Douglas, he said at the time.
In terms of the section leading into Mowbray River, the Government now favours sending the track up the ranges from Wangetti on Quaid Road, along the Twin Bridges Track and then onto the Bump Track.
“Reopening the Twin Bridges Track brings the future stage of connecting Wangetti to Port Douglas forward, while we continue to explore additional routes to showcase this stunning part of Tropical North Queensland,” Minister Powell said last month.
The Government announced in June that completing the 94km Wangetti Trail from Palm Cove to Port Douglas was one of the top-four priorities of a new tourism plan “to make Queensland the leading holiday destination in the nation”.
Destination 2045, promoted as a “visionary roadmap to supercharge the state’s industry into a new era of growth, innovation and global leadership” touts the Trail as a major project at the forefront of the future of tourism in Queensland.
Slated last year to cost $47m to complete, the price of the trail continues to rise, with an extra about $20m pledged in this year’s state budget.
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