Cunnamulla Hot Springs officially launches tourist season | Opening night gallery
The remote town of Cunnamulla has recently become the newest location for Melbourne-based hot springs giant, Peninsula Hot Springs. While it seems like an unlikely pairing, it could be a recipe for success.
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To walk through the doors of Cunnamulla’s newest tourist attraction is to enter a dreamland.
The architecture of the building feels brutalist, the staff’s customer service and attention to detail is impeccable. To sit in one of the many natural pools, watch the Warrego River drift by, to the cacophony of cockatoos, is to reach nirvana.
Diffusers billow essential oils into the reception, and Lili Williams, one of the spring’s managers imported from Melbourne’s Peninsula Hot Springs, greets guests with calm assuredness.
Cunnamulla is a comparatively big town, home to more than 1200 residents, and the administrative centre of the Paroo Shire Council.
However, it is unavoidably cornered by distance; a nine hour drive from Brisbane, and two flights in and out of the airport every week.
While the facility was publicly funded, with substantial input from the local, state and federal government totalling $12m, the facility is operated by Peninsula Hot Springs.
Co-founder and creative director of Peninsula Hot Springs, Charles Davidson, said the notion of a wellness facility in such a remote place was his brainchild.
Mr Davidson said he has had a vision for an outback hot springs experience since he first visited Cunnamulla in 2008.
In 2023, Peninsula Hot Springs was awarded the tender to operate the multi-million dollar facility.
“The initial aim is to help create a connection to Country,” Mr Davidson said.
“We really felt that this was authentic connection to Country.
“With the attraction of the hot springs, we want then to be able to go out onto Country, and learn more, and help build programs where people can start to work with the Indigenous community and learn more about culture.”
Mr Davidson said another facet of wellness is that people often want to travel to remote locations for wellness experiences, which he said Cunnamulla was the ideal backdrop for.
“I like to think of this location as one of the most remote locations in the least populated country on earth,” Mr Davidson said.
Mr Davidson also said he saw Cunnamulla as a kind of geographical epicentre between some of the larger cities in Australia, where people can come to escape their lives.
“We’d like Cunnamulla to become the outback wellness destination,” he said.
The Paroo Shire more broadly is already well on its way there, with this new facility the sixth artesian bathing experience in the region.
Charlotte Plains is one of the other artesian bathing facilities in the region and manager Jess Johnston said she thinks all the hot springs facilities work together.
“We’ve just got different things to offer,” Ms Johnston said.
Cunnamulla welcomes approximately 300 visitors per week during peak season, according to a Cunnamulla Fella visitor centre spokeswoman.
The spokeswoman said the new facility would bring more tourist dollars and more investment into the town.
She also said she thought the new facility fits the energy of the town, through a shared belief in a slower way of life.
Paroo Shire Council tourism manager Ian Stone said that investment will be felt by all in the town.
“I think (the hot springs) are basically going to change Cunnamulla from a stopping point into a destination, where people are actually going to come specifically to visit the Hot Springs, and all the artesian experiences here,” Mr Stone said.
“This week, I was speaking to people from Brisbane that have said they have come literally for the hot springs, before they’d never considered coming to Cunnamulla.”
Paroo Shire mayor Suzette Beresford said she also believed the tourism dollar would be felt widely in the community.
“This is the best thing that has happened to Cunnamulla, apart from the levee perhaps,” Ms Beresford said.
This enthusiasm was echoed throughout the community, with a healthy 70 people in attendance at the launch event on Thursday, according to the Hot Springs’ general manager, Paul Harper-Green.
Mr Harper-Green said the sign of a good tourist season will be half the tourists who are travelling through Cunnamulla to bathe at the springs.
Mr Harper-Green said since the hot springs’ official opening in February, 1500 people have visited the facility.
While at the moment the facility seems disjointed from the country essence of Cunnamulla, with the backing of community support, it seems the notion that the town could plausibly become a wellness hub isn’t as far “out there” as the town itself.
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Originally published as Cunnamulla Hot Springs officially launches tourist season | Opening night gallery
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