LOST COURSE

There will be no resurgence. Paradise Palms, in far north Queensland is no more.

The once glorious Paradise Palms layout had the final nail hammered into its coffin recently when a legal challenge to a redevelopment of the site was withdrawn and the matter settled.

The challenge by nearby residents to the $300 million development began in 2020 when Cairns Regional Council granted approval to rezone the course – once ranked in the top-three resort courses in Australia – which closed in March, 2019, just four years after the current owners purchased the site. The course will now be sub-divided into five lots and there are plans to develop a 330-lot residential subdivision, a Catholic primary school, a tourist caravan park, retirement village and open-space wildlife corridors.

It’s a long way from the celebrated tropical golfing jewel that opened for play just 31 years ago. The owners, Daikyo, celebrated the opening by hosting a $180,000 Skins Game, which pitted Japanese legend Isao Aoki against then World No.1 Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer and two-time US Open Champion Curtis Strange. Aoki and Strange grabbed most of the cash and Paradise Palms’ reputation as a challenging test and beautiful place to play was born, thanks to a worldwide television coverage of the event.

Its beauty lay in the rolling fairways, lined by dense stands of Eucalypts and tropical vegetation (and occasional mango tree), with strategically placed bunkers and manmade lakes scattered throughout. Then there was the rainforest-covered Great Dividing Range that dominated the view to the west and north of the layout, giving the Graham Marsh and Ross Watson-designed layout a real feel of playing golf in paradise. Paradise now lost.