Hervey Bay is a city in Queensland, Australia. The city is situated approximately or 3½ hours highway drive north of the state capital, Brisbane. It is a natural bay between the Queensland mainland and nearby Fraser Island. The local economy relies on tourism which is based primarily around whale watching in Platypus Bay to the North, access to Fraser Island, accessible recreational fishing and boating and the natural north facing, calm beaches with wide undeveloped foreshore zones.
At the 2011 Australian Census the city recorded a population of 76,403. Hervey Bay is an area of high population growth.
History
The indigenous Butchulla people are the traditional residents of Hervey Bay. The first recorded European sighting of Hervey Bay was made by James Cook while carrying out his running survey of the east coast of Australia, on the 22 May 1770. "By noon Cook's ship was in a position a little over half-way across the opening of Hervey Bay heading for Bundaberg. When Cook first discovered Hervey Bay, he did not realize that Fraser Island was a separate part of land to Australia, Cook did not travel far enough south due to the shallow depths of the waters in the Bay. Cook named the bay "Hervey's Bay" after Augustus John Hervey (1724–1779), later Third Earl of Bristol, a naval officer who became a Lord of the Admiralty the year Endeavour returned".
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