The median one-bedroom unit in Noosa will set you back $920,000. But Sally White got hers for just $150,000.
It even came with waterfront views.
Like many long-term residents of the once-sleepy regional town on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane, the dental nurse was locked out of the housing market during the pandemic as prices shot up. So in 2021, she bought a houseboat.
But now she is among about 20 houseboat owners worried they could be forced off the water by the state’s first 28-day limit to anchoring on a river with a boat longer than 5 metres. The deadline, imposed on 1 January, passed on Thursday.
Proponents argue that the Noosa River that snakes through the town is congested with dozens of vessels, causing a safety risk for recreational boating. But White is worried that she faces eviction from her home of four years, and blames the decision on class.
One side of White’s Queen of the Slipstream is now covered in signs: “The river is for everyone!!! Not just the privileged!!!”
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Sally Hayes, an artist who also lives on a Noosa houseboat, says there are residents of the river who have lived there for “upward of 30 years”, and more than a few who can boast of more than a decade.
“When we’ve got a housing situation like we do, and you’ve got a solution right here under our feet, it seems so absurd that these people are taking such a hard line to actually make it worse,” she says.
The 28-day rule has been in the works for years. There has been a local push for stricter river regulations since at least 2015, and in 2021 the Noosa River management plan was born.
A report produced by the transport department in 2023 after public consultation reads: “Vessels at anchor or aground restrict sightlines and public access, adding to crowding and amenity impacts. Congested areas of the river with competing usages require the prioritisation of safety.”
The report noted that the limit was the among the state’s first, although the Gold Coast had imposed a seven-day limit “in some areas”.
Andrew McCarthy started the Noosa Boating Fishing Alliance to protect recreational boaters’ interests in the river. He argues the management plan is a compromise.
The river is extraordinarily shallow – as little as 30cm in parts – and at one point there were as many as 250 boats in a short stretch of water, McCarthy says.
“This was one of my biggest single concerns – the physical number of boats pushed kids in sabots [junior sailing boats] or tourists on a paddleboard close to motor boats,” he says.
The state government estimated this week there were about 120 vessels anchored in the Noosa River, about 20 of which were used as full-time residences and another nine as weekend or part-time accommodation.
Dozens more are moored – tied to a permanent, approved fixture. Some of those are abandoned. Others are expensive recreational catamarans.
White and Hayes say they would love to pay for a mooring. But the local independent state MP, Sandy Bolton, says the community is “strongly in favour of capping moorings to current numbers”.
‘Manhattanisation’ of Noosa
In the five years to 2023 Noosa had the country’s hottest housing market, according to local real estate agent Robbie Neller, and the market hasn’t cooled down. Prices have risen by about 110% since the pandemic, he says.
“Even when I grew up here, it was cheap. Anyone could live here. You could literally be on the dole and afford to live in a unit here in Peregian Beach,” he says.
But the local council has long been sceptical of housing development, particularly after a 1995 attempt to cap its population at 56,500. It has since evolved into one of the state’s top tourism destinations.
Neller says Noosa now has a form of “Manhattanisation” – local businesses left dependent on working holiday visa holders as low-paid service workers are forced out of the area.
Having been forced offshore by the cost of housing, White says the 28-day rule is now designed to get rid of her for good, clearing the view for residents of the multimillion-dollar mansions lining the foreshore of the river. She says she has been called “scum” in online arguments over the imposition of the rule.
A spokesperson for Maritime Safety Queensland says the rules “are designed to ensure the river can still be safely enjoyed by all of the community and not used as a long-term vessel storage facility”.
Bolton denies the decision was motivated in any way by class, arguing that “our community is a deeply caring one”. It will “end the river being used as a permanent free storage facility for private property”, she says.
She says her office is ready to work with any resident with special circumstances, including financial hardship, to “assist them towards compliance as they have already done with dozens of vessel owners”.
Hayes plans to sell up and leave the area if she is made to move. It’s no longer affordable, but that isn’t the only reason, she says.
“I don’t want to be amongst these people if they don’t want me here. It’s a horrible feeling.”
