Pimpama estate uses star power
JAMIE Durie designs that are in the homes of Academy Award winners in Hollywood will be a signature of the $1 billion Maddison Estate at Pimpama.
The master-planned community was given the ‘‘Hollywood treatment’’ yesterday when Durie, and Olympians Natalie Cook and Samantha Riley, made their marks in concrete as new plans for the estate were revealed.
Project director Luke Barnett said the community would also have the world’s first continuous wave pool, designed by surfing legend Kelly Slater, after the surf park was declared a major project of state significance by the State Government.
The 118ha Maddison Estate, a project by Peter Drake’s LM Investment Management and its investors, will house 3500 residents and create more than 3000 jobs during con-
We’ll be making sure that kids are reintroduced to their own back yard
- Jamie Durie
struction. Celebrity gardener Durie, who grew up surfing on the Gold Coast when he went to Benowa High School, and his Durie Design team, will create the six recreational parks covering 37ha of the estate.
Durie said his garden designs would be ‘‘quintessentially Queensland and filled with native Australian plants’’ rather than ‘‘typical tropical palm GC’’.
But they will contain a little touch of Hollywood. ‘‘Large gabion bowls containing grass trees are a signature piece of mine that I put into all my developments now,’’ he said.
‘‘They are sitting in a couple of Academy Award-winners’ homes in Hollywood.
‘‘But we’ll be making sure that kids are reintroduced to their own back yard.’’
Sydney 2000 gold medallist and five-time Olympian Natalie Cook will create a Sandstorm beach volleyball park in the estate’s Central Park.
Cook, whose association with LM Investments and Peter Drake began when he financed her journey to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, said she hoped the centre would help ‘‘find the next Natalie Cook’’ .
‘‘I hope we find the next Olympian and Commonwealth Games beach volleyballer right here at Maddison Estate under the guidance of my coaching programs and my coach,’’ she said.
Multiple Olympic medallist and Gold Coaster Sam Riley, who operates six centres in Brisbane, will also open the first Gold Coast Sam Riley Swim School at the estate.