COVID leaves a cloud hanging over the tropics

Harry Sou had devoted two decades to building a Chinese restaurant empire in far north Queensland, serving up to 1000 hungry international tourists a time from its base at the Cairns casino.

Now he has retreated from five restaurants to a 50-seat venue off a service station car park that caters for locals and the occasional road-tripper.

“I’d like to think this pandemic is only once in 100 years,” Sou quips. “I don’t think bad luck will come so regularly … nothing like this scale.”

Empty shops with “For Lease” signs and shuttered hotels highlight the economic pain the pandemic caused the tropical far north Queensland community, which is heavily reliant on international tourism.

Australia slammed its international borders shut in its fight against COVID-19, and there is no clear timetable to reopen the country to overseas visitors.

The federal government’s JobKeeper program has provided a lifeline to struggling Cairns tourism operators, but they fear the fallout when the wage subsidy ends within weeks.

While the Queensland and federal governments have announced $200 travel vouchers, an “aggressive” marketing campaign, and a subsidy to reduce airfares to prop up the industry, many want JobKeeper extended beyond the end of this month.

Well beyond a road trip for most tourists, Cairns is almost 1700 kilometres north of Brisbane. The drive from the Queensland capital to Sydney is significantly shorter.

Sugar cane and tourism fuel the economy in Cairns, which is home to about 150,000 residents and a once-bustling international airport. Pre-pandemic, about 40 per cent of visitors came from overseas, driving a tourism sector worth $2 billion a year.

Domestic tourists have failed to fill the breach caused by international border closures, tourism operators say. They welcome the government subsidies announced this week but stress that extending JobKeeper is the key to keeping them afloat and preventing further job losses.

Sou waves as he issues a friendly “thank you” over the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen just metres away at Cafe China.

Until late last year, his restaurant occupied some of the best real estate in the Cairns CBD – in the only casino a short stroll from the marina, where thousands of people would queue daily to board boats bound for the Great Barrier Reef.

After two decades working in the region, including 12 years spent slowly growing the Chinese tourist market, his restaurant could seat more than 900 diners at a time.

But as border closures coincided with a number of leases expiring, Sou realised he had one option – downsizing.

“We had no choice,” he says. “We wouldn’t been able to survive in our older business model.”

Like many others who have managed to keep their doors open for the past year, he now caters largely to domestic tourists and locals.

Other tourist attractions, such as the long-running Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park, have fared worse. “It is with great regret we announce that the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park (Tjapukai) will not be reopening,” it announced.

When the Ocean Freedom pulls into the Cairns Marlin Marina on a Wednesday afternoon, 10 paying customers step off the vessel, which ferried about 70 tourists a day to the reef before the pandemic.

The day’s takings would not even cover the fuel bill, owner Perry Jones says.

“I made nothing today, but the crew got a job,” he says.

Earlier in the week, Jones attended a breakfast with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and asked if the federal wage subsidy could continue and expand to allow operators to hire staff.

“At the moment I can’t employ someone because with 10 [passengers], that doesn’t even pay the fuel,” Jones says.

He and two others of the larger family-owned operators have banded together to push through the tough times. Since July last year, they agreed to “split” the week so they were not cannibalising each other’s already-reduced business. Waived state port authority fees have helped significantly, too.

“That’s a very Cairns thing,” Allan Wallish says around the table of his own tour boat, Passions of Paradise, which now runs four days a week at 20 per cent capacity. “I’ve been doing this now for 30 years and my competitors are still some of my best friends.”

Tour boat operators have shared some research work and coral planting for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which has helped lift finances and staff morale.

“We didn’t want to just fall off a cliff in March,” Wallish says. “So how you replicate JobKeeper, that was obviously a big thing for us.”

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chairman Ken Chapman says it is “very disappointing” the JobKeeper program is set to end.

“At the end of March, we are going to see, unfortunately, quite a lot of people losing their jobs around town,” he says at a press conference at the marina.

“But this is an opportunity for the people of Australia to do something about it.”

A few streets back from the waterfront, thousands of backpackers from around the globe have stayed within the terracotta-coloured walls of Travellers Oasis.

Owner Gabriel Thallon runs the hostel and another nearby with his wife, Kathy. Before the pandemic, the couple bankrolled a major expansion of the site, which now features five buildings and caters for 50 guests in 22 rooms.

After a busier summer period died off, Thallon sometimes wonders if his telephone is unplugged or his website is down. He is now forced to consider how to survive in a “holding pattern” until the interstate and international tourists return.

“Is it a case of redesigning the property?” he suggests. “Do you turn some of the houses into long-term [rentals] … lease out two bedrooms down here?”

Cairns tourism operators are quick to offer their ideas to ease the strain. The federal government could provide confidence to travellers by covering hotel-quarantine costs if state borders shut while they are on holiday.

The Queensland tourism marketing system could also be overhauled to better promote regions.

The federal government’s decision to subsidise flights addressed price, which has been a sticking point for tourists considering a Cairns holiday in the past, but it was seen as a short-term “shock” rather than a panacea.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen says if the region can “secure our share” of the airfare subsidy, an extra 5000 to 7000 visitors could land each week and inject up to $1 million a day to the local economy.

Back at Cafe China, Sou epitomises the thread of determination that still runs through the tourism town.

With no state border restrictions in place, he is optimistic about the Easter holidays.

His return to the CBD is likely off the cards for at least five years as Cairns, Australia and the world emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I like to think the recovery will be slow, and I have to be very patient, too,” Sou says.