A pensioner who pioneered a $400 million plus water park on the Sunshine Coast has won a court battle with investors after being left with nothing

The 73 year old Arthur Downing spent five years finding the site on Steve Irwin Way before agreeing to his project in exchange for $1.25 million.

But he was never paid. However, a recent appeal has ruled in favour of Mr Downing and the company is now in the final stages of negotiating the bulk of the earthworks contracts.

Brisbane’s hotel boom has opened over 4000 hotel rooms since 2014 and more than 3000 are expect to open by 2022.

This increase has left a large amount of rooms unoccupied as the Queensland Tourism Industry Council Chief Executive, Daniel Gschwind saying it’s difficult to smoothly match supply and demand.

Brisbane Lord Mayor, Graham Quirk, says the additional supply of accommodation will attract more events than ever before.

A unique coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon River has been discovered by a Greenpeace ship, but is set to be the new oil drilling location of French company, Total.

The unexplored undersea environment has experts saying the area could contain vital research opportunities to potentially treat cancer and infectious diseases.  

This would be majorly disrupted if Total’s drilling licence is approved as operations could begin this year.

Queensland and Western Australia will come into line with Southern States when single use plastic bags are banned on July 1.

Heavy duty plastic bags will still be available and if people continue their one-use habits with these bags, it will be much worse for the environment.

These bags will have to be used at least four times for them to be beneficial and Professor Sami Kara from the University of New South Wales says “It’s better in the long term that we don’t use [plastic bags] at all.”

A new study suggests that young couchsurfers could have worse mental health and greater risk of suicide than those sleeping on the streets.

Preliminary results from the research project suggest that Brisbane couchsurfers are twice as likely to describe their mental health as “poor”.
 

Couchsurfers remain a hidden form of homelessness for young australians with over 20,000 reporting to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare between 2013-2014.

A storage centre in Ipswich has leaked water soluble toxins into a nearby creek.

The liquid is believed to have been Wala Gel which is an additive to explosives.

The gel is potentially toxic to animals and was leaked in the area that flows onto Ipswich’s Six Mile Creek environmental zone.