A shack with craic
Beach hut ‘guardian’ loses keys
SELF-CONFESSED larrikin Col Gardener is the caretaker of 3551 Main Beach Parade – one of the most iconic beachfront shacks on the Gold Coast.
The unofficial mayor of Woodroffe Ave said: “It’s been a dentist’s surgery, a vet, a doctor’s practice and a brothel. If only the walls could talk.”
But the story of how Mr Gardener, 60, got the keys to the 1930s house, owned by Queensland billionaire John van Lieshout, is nothing short of extraordinary.
“So I’ve been coming to this part of Main Beach for decades to walk along the beach, I’ve got a bit fat, and there’s a little bench with six pandamus trees and they were starting to give me the s**ts, all the dead branches, so I decided to pull them down,” he said.
“Well, this one particular day I happened to be there and the owner of the shack happened to be there also and he’s come out with a can of p*** and a can of coke and a ladder – because I was on his fenceline.
“A few branches fell over into his house and I said ‘I’ll clean these up’ and we got yakking and before you know it he’s giving me the keys to the place to take care of.
“I said to him: ‘You don’t know me from a bar of soap.’ And he said: ‘I know good people.’ He even offered to pay me. This was about two years ago.”
The beach house, currently being demolished, holds a special place in the heart of Mr Gardener. He used to walk past it every day when he holidayed on the Gold Coast with his family from Ipswich – he also met his partner of 50 years during his beach holidays.
WITH A LAST NAME LIKE GARDENER, YOU’D LIKE TO THINK I WAS PRETTY GOOD AT TAKING CARE OF BACKYARDS.
COL GARDENER
“I used to walk past that joint when I was a kid, I was led to believe it was a party house. In fact it’s been lots of things in its heyday,” he said.
Mr Gardener, a former station master at Helensvale, says he’s taken his caretaker role seriously. He pulled out hundreds of weeds using his hands and a screwdriver. He says it took him hours but meant his precious lawn wouldn’t be affected chemical sprays.
“I’ve had it so green and a few months back I had it looking like Boxing Day test cricket match, I even put stumps in it.
“In fact, cricket great Ian Healy, who holidays at the nearby Spinnaker Apartments, looked down at the backyard and one day came over and told me he was impressed with it.
“Well, with a last name like Gardener, fair dinkum, you’d like to think I was pretty good at taking care of backyards.”
But Mr Gardener doesn’t just tend to the beach house, he keeps an eye on the Woodroffe area, keeping it rubbish free, trimming greenery and keeping grass green. by
“They call me the mayor of Woodroffe. I muck around most days to keep things looking shipshape.”
Mr Gardener recalled a time when was able to give former State of Origin great Bobby Linder a look at the premises. He used to holiday at the beach shack “back in the day”.
“He told me that when he used to rent there it was called the blue house, but that’s before he was married.”
Surprisingly, the Ashmore local isn’t sad the beach house is being pulled down because the owner “is a lovely man who is building a beach house for his family, not some ugly highrise”.
“I’m glad to have been the person to look after a piece of history and be entrusted by a man who didn’t even know me from a bar of soap.”
And what will he do now it’s being pulled down?
“Well, I’ll watch them built a new house. It’ll probably take about a year at least and then hopefully he might invite me over to hang out.”