| Shute Harbour is located about 10 minutes drive from Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays and is a major ferry port, servicing the Whitsunday islands and resort with daily ferry transferrs. |
| Although it's a working port, Shute harbour is a very pretty one and has recently undergone improvements and developments. Many people fish here in the evenings from the Jetty's when the ferry's are not operating. Fishing can be excellent here. |
| The waters around Shute, Tancred and Repair Islands, including Rooper Inlet and Shute Bay had been known locally as ‘Shute Harbour' for many years before development began there. The harbour was a popular boating destination for picnics and holiday camps long before the road from Airlie was put through, with the main camping spots being Snow's Beach (Little Beach) in the harbour proper and ‘Cane Cockies Cove' on the southern side of The Beak.
Once plans for development of the harbour emerged in the late 1950s the name ‘Shute Harbour' was advocated but moves in that direction were defeated in the Proserpine Shire Council on 22 August 1960 and again in October that year, the majority favouring retention of the names Rooper Inlet and Shute Bay. It was not until 11 March 1985 that council acceded to a proposal from the Department of Harbours and Marine to name the waters officially ‘Shute Harbour' and this was promulgated in April 1986. The harbour encompasses all the waters west of a line joining The Beak on the mainland, White Rock and Stripe Point on the mainland.
From the emergence of tourism in the Whitsundays in the 1930s jetty facilities had been constructed in the Cannonvale and Abell Point area but these suffered badly from exposure to northerly winds and cyclones and in the 1950s pressures arose from business groups in Proserpine for the development of Shute Harbour as a better site. In June 1954, October 1956 and April 1958 official parties walked from Airlie to Shute Harbour examining the feasibility of a road and this and other pressures eventually were successful and in 1959 surveys were made for a road. Thiess Brothers commenced work on the new road in May 1960 and meanwhile, in January 1960, tenders were called for the building of a jetty at Shute Harbour and the contract was won by Campbell Constructions Ltd who built the jetty with the aid of a specially equipped barge Uki. |
