Boomerang Farm hits the market
A HIGH-PROFILE Gold Coast wedding venue and golf course has hit the market, with the vast suburban property billed as a potential future eco resort.
Mudgeeraba’s historic Boomerang Farm, which features a nine-hole golf course, wedding and events venue The Acre and 14-trail gravity mountain bike park, is for sale by expressions of interest.
Despite the impending sale, brides and grooms planning their nuptials at the 89ha property have no reason to panic, with the buyer bound in the sale contract to honour forward bookings.
Co-owner Rob King, who operates King’s Landscaping from his home overlooking Boomerang Farm, said he first bought because he didn’t want to see it over developed.
“I bought it in the first place because (the previous owners) were talking about subdividing it into acre lots and I didn’t want to be overlooking housing,” he said.
“I hope it stays as it is, it’s a very popular wedding destination – this month they only have one free day – and the downhill mountain bike riding is going very well.
“We’ve had it for a long time and it’s time to sell I suppose.”
Mr King said honouring two years’ of forward wedding bookings would be a condition of the property’s sale.
Area councillor Glenn Tozer said community fears the property would be razed and turned to housing, were unfounded.
“The likelihood of that is very low because it is outside the designated urban footprint and is in close enough proximity to the national park that it’s considered significant protect vegetation,” he said.
“(Residential development of the site) would be highly unlikely to pass through the council or state government, and would also undermine the commercial viability of the site.
“A much more likely prospect is an eco-tourism and event space that leverages the existing uses of the site.”
Cr Tozer said the property was commercially viable with its current uses, which include downhill mountain bike racing.
“Fox Racing and Red Bull have used it for their videos and promotional videos, it’s a sport that’s expanding,” he said.
“It also has a nine-hole golf course and a very busy function centre.”
Property records show Robert and Sandra King bought the farm for $300,000 in 1987, and it is now jointly owned by Robert, his brother James King, Peggy King and Toshio Shinohara.
It was previously owned by American aeronautical scientist Lorin Hawes, who’d helped develop the atom bomb.
After settling in the Hinterland, Dr Hawes turned his attention to smaller
weapons, manufacturing boomerangs on the property, which he opened as a tourist attraction in 1965.
Mr King said, after buying the farm, his family reopened the dormant boomerang business for a short while, before the city’s major theme parks were built and took away much of the tourist trade.
He and his brother built the ninehole golf course in 1994.
Before the Kings bought it, the property was at the centre of a land investment scandal in the mid-1980s which took in 364 investors and triggered a state government investigation which later described it as a “swindle”.