Mooloolaba Harbour history revealed
One of the biggest commercial fishing ports on the east coast, the Mooloolaba Harbour has a history richer than most. Read about the colourful secrets of its past here.
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Renowned globally for its world class seafood and locally for its night-life and family-friendly leisure offerings, Mooloolaba Harbour’s present masks its colourful past.
Read about the harbour’s history below:
1996 drug bust
One of the largest fishing ports on Australia’s east coast, Mooloolaba Harbour was once linked to one of the largest cannabis importation seizures in Queensland at the time.
In 1996, more than 10 men were arrested for the part they played trafficking eight tonnes of cannabis resin worth about $64m on a sloop called The Highlander.
The drug bust was completed north of the Sunshine Coast, but the yacht had sailed from Mooloolaba east of Fraser Island and then crossed the sandbar into the water off Poona.
Australian Federal Police documents state some of the men arrested were camped in an isolated position and had small boats used to retrieve drugs from The Highlander.
At the time, it was the state’s largest seizure of a single importation of hashish.
The yacht had spent time moored in Mooloolaba before the drug bust and Customs officers had at one point posed as tourists at a harbourside cafe to watch the boat.
Policing the harbour
Sunshine Coast Water Police officer in charge Kyle Bates joined the team the year before the Highlander drug bust.
He said the Sunshine Coast Water Police’s role in the bust was largely surveillance.
The Water Police today serve as an enforcement agency for Maritime Safety Queensland, Sergeant Bates said, and were primarily involved with recreational watercraft rather than commercial fishers.
He said there had been many incidents of drink-driving on the Mooloolaba harbour over the years, but there was not a concerningly high amount of drink-driving offences issued in the harbour, he said.
History of the port
On the wharves, commercial longline fisher of 35 years Paul Vasicek extends an invitation to come aboard.
The Huon pine of his Tasmanian-bought vessel, Takine, is cool underfoot.
“I have to say, at one time or another, the base of the Huon pine there would have been a Tasmanian tiger nesting underneath it,” Mr Vasicek said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if my boat was part of that.”
He lays unpolished and perfect-fitting planks over the hold he was working within and makes himself comfortable on a crate.
The commercial fisher’s father helped establish the Mooloolaba Harbour seaway in the 1960s, after he moved his family from New Guinea where he worked as an aircraft engineer.
“The harbour was just a big sand bank (before the break wall),” Mr Vasicek said.
The commercial angler’s father was a qualified underwater explosive engineer who helped to blast away the coffee rock to create the harbour.
Mr Vasicek said the bar at the entrance to the Mooloolah River remained difficult and dangerous to navigate, in what was otherwise one of the best fishing ports in South East Queensland.
The father-of-four has docked at the harbour “on and off” for about 20 years throughout his fishing career and because his children live on the Sunshine Coast, he remains in Mooloolaba.
“This is one of my joys and my passion,” he said.
The high-stress job came at a price, though, and the 64-year-old recounted two strokes, a heart attack and a separation from his wife among the costs.
Although the longline angler loved his job, he encouraged his sons to find other trades.
“We are an endangered species, us commercial fishermen,” he said.
“We’re a dying breed, the government hasn’t given us any security.”
He said one of the most memorable moments in the harbour was watching his son, who was 27 at the time, drive a 22m boat to the sea for the first time.
“The swell was pumping on the bar,” Mr Vasicek said.
“When he approached the bar, and he had that moment and he had that window and he shot out.
“The next thing, the sets came in and they were as big as the front parts of the boat and you know what he did?
“He drove that boat into the sets, because he drove that boat into the sets he had no chance of rolling it over. It’s one of the safest things you can do, but not everybody knows to do that on that bar.”
Mr Vasicek said that if people “were natural” fishers, the “salt water goes through their veins” and people could not shake that.
“That’s what being attached to the ocean is all about,” Mr Vasicek said.
A little less of a secret these days is the harbour’s double act.
Posing as a passage for commercial and recreational vessels between the safety of Mooloolaba Marina and the deep blue, the harbour also moonlights as one of the region’s best surf breaks when conditions are right.
The long time home of the Mooloolaba Australasian Etchells Championship’s problematic bar doubles as a popular wave for surfers and bodyboarders, causing havoc for skippers trying to navigate the already treacherous stretch.
A debate continues to rage over whether an extension of the breakwall would provide improved harbour access, but many fear the destruction of the wave if the wall was to be extended.
Tragedies
Point Cartwright looms large above the harbour.
The lighthouse and water tower, sprawling parklands and popular walking trails also mask a darkness.
Meaghan Louise Rose, then 25, was found dead at the bottom of Point Cartwright cliffs in 1997.
Initially ruled a suicide, her cold case was reopened this year with a $500,000 reward offered for information about her alleged killer.
No charges have ever been laid over her death but her former partner Keith Lees, 70, has been accused of her murder and an arrest warrant has been issued.
Police remain on the search for Mr Lees, while his child has publicly urged him to hand himself into the authorities.
The cliffs are a site dotted with tragedy over the years.
In February 2010, three people fell to their death from the cliffs while partying.
In October 2021, a man was reported to have slipped and fallen to his death on the eastern side of the point.
A memorial tree stands in the reserve at Point Cartwright, a tragic reminder of a life taken too soon.
Sixteen-year-old Balin Stewart was stabbed to death outside his Buddina home on January 20, 2022.
The popular teen’s memorial serves as a place for reflection for many of his friends, at a place he loved to spend time.
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