‘$30m park not for sale’
A GOLD Coast holiday spot labelled the “most horrendous accommodation” with customers complaining of insect infestations, dirty beds and “poo skids”, has been advertised for sale with an eightfigure price tag – but all is not what it seems.
Southport Tourist Park, on Frank St in Labrador, has been advertised for offers over $30m. However, its owner this week said it was not for sale and the reviews are fake.
The 2.4-acre park, which houses a number of long-term residents, has been marketed since 2020 as for sale with vacant possession, meaning a buyer would be free to bulldoze and develop it.
The Low family, which owns the park, are among the suburb’s biggest lease-free landlords, operating a swath of ageing buildings picked up at 1990s prices.
The park is directed by Theodora “Dora” Low, 76, and her daughter Gloria Low, 56.
Dora and her late husband Tom Low bought the park in 1980, paid $50,000 to add an adjoining nursing-home property, and have since added two other neighbouring residential holdings, at a cost of $1.35m.
The family has previously tried unsuccessfully to obtain council approval to operate the tourist park as a health and wellness retreat.
Ms Low said she still hoped to develop a health centre, based on the teachings of Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.
She said eating a special diet helped her daughter
overcome leukaemia and cleared Mr Low of terminal prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and depression.
Ms Low said, after her husband suffered a stroke in 2016, he was brain dead, in a coma and not expected to survive.
She said a priest baptised him and the family arranged a funeral before going to the hospital to say goodbye and turn off his life support.
To their surprise, Mr Low was already off life support and awake when they arrived.
“He wanted to leave and his brain was as fresh as anybody’s,” Ms Low said.
Mr Low passed away from an unrelated medical condition in 2020.
Ms Low’s ambition to develop a health retreat on the premises may come as a shock to visitors to the park, which online reviews have described as a “health hazard”, “a dump” “unclean”, “dirty”, “unsafe” and in need of “health inspectors”.
“If you want to shower with drug addicts sitting in the next cubicle in a circle, brush your teeth with animal poo or someone’s hair sitting on the communal basin for eight days – go here,” one reviewer said.
“STAY AWAY you are safer on the side of the road at a beautiful Gold Coast beach.”
Many of the reviews include photos of conditions
visitors say they encountered in the park.
Ms Low said the bad reviews were not real and had come from disgruntled former residents who she’d had to evict.
The tourist park property has been advertised for sale many times since 2008, when it was listed for $16m.
More unsuccessful sales campaigns were mounted in 2010 and 2011 at $15m, and the current $30m campaign kicked off in November 2020.
The Low family’s holding is on the western side of the Gold Coast Hwy and includes a large brick apartment block on a separate title at 2 Frank St, backing on to Loder Creek, purchased
for $800,000 in 2002.
That lot unsuccessfully hit the market with a $12m price tag for 967 days from 2005-2008.
The family also owns a house and land abutting the park on Huth St and rents out apartments in nearby fiveunit walk-up Yenom, at 5 Robert St, which property records say was bought for $500,000 in 1991.
The tourist park’s website lists for rent a five-bedroom house, two-bedroom flat and two-bedroom “family cottage”, which have unspecified addresses.
It has a collection of hostel rooms with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities.