Questions over condition of stinger net at Dingo Beach

WHITSUNDAY Regional Council has been questioned over its maintenance of the Dingo Beach stinger net.

DISGRACE: Holes continue to appear in the Dingo Beach stinger net and local resident Frank Johnson is questioning council’s maintenance at the site.

WHITSUNDAY Regional Council has been questioned over its maintenance of the Dingo Beach stinger net after one concerned local referred to the swimming enclosure as looking like a "tip".

Frank Johnson, a resident of the area for more than 15 years, has been sending the council photographs of rips and holes in the netting, for what he describes as "quite some time".

"This swimming enclosure is supposed to be one of the attractions of Dingo Beach [but] lately it looks like a tip and it looks as if many of the repair materials [have] come from there," Mr Johnson said. "[And] this problem is not isolated - it's happened many times before."

Mr Johnson says the type of netting in use at Dingo Beach appears to be particularly susceptible to tearing.

"And this is one of the things the council don't seem to worry about supervising - they just wait for someone to complain about it," he said.

On January 19, Mr Johnson reported a number of problems with the net, which he says were fixed, but just days later a new hole appeared, about two metres long and about 500mm below the high tide line.

Mr Johnson says many locals don't swim inside the enclosure "because they know what the condition of the net is like under the water".

He is worried about what could happen to those who are unaware.

"This is really dangerous... and someone's going to get stung," he said.

On hearing about the issue, mayor Jennifer Whitney gave a commitment to "get the [council] officers onto it".

"Obviously we need to look at the age of the net and also the materials we're repairing it with because if this is something that's constantly occurring there's something wrong," she said.