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Bush fires turn Australian beach haven into ghost town

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

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Usually in January, tourists would be jostling for space on the bright white sands of Australia’s Hyams Beach. But not this time! Raging bushfires across south-western Australia are taking a huge toll on tourism, reducing some resorts to ghost towns in New South Wales in peak season as vacationers fear being encircled by blazes.

 

Authorities blocked access to Hyams Beach at the weekend amid severe drought, record high temperatures and winds fanning fires as close as 15 kilometres away.

 

On Tuesday, there was only a trickle of the usual throngs on the sand, with streets eerily empty.

 

“We come every year, we’ve never seen it like this before. It’s normally mayhem,” said Jemima Albrecht, 31, a teacher from Bendigo in Victoria State, adding that fires were blocking her roads home. “It was safer for us to stay here.”

 

Hyams Beach boasts stunning turquoise waters and what locals say is the world’s whitest sand, making it a haven for selfie-seekers and an Instagram favourite.

 

The tiny town’s narrow roads were deserted on Tuesday but for residents’ parked vehicles, with no sign of the lines of day-trippers normally corralled into a traffic management system.

 

One retired couple read books on deckchairs on the near-empty beach as a man and his children hunted for crabs in rock pools. A group of young women bathed in the strong afternoon sun, posing for pictures between dips.

 

Fires have killed 25 people this summer season and torn through more than 8.6 million hectares (21.3 million acres) of land, an area nearly the size of Austria, razing thousands of buildings and cutting off power and communications.

 

Navy ships have been evacuating thousands of vacationers and residents from the coastal town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 people fled to the waterfront on New Year’s Eve.

 

Though there is no national data yet, there is bound to be a major negative impact for tourism which accounts for 3.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Last summer, Australia attracted 2.71 million holidaymakers, many fleeing the northern hemisphere winter.

 

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