On 4 November 1999 the rights and interests in the site of the former remote receiving station at 441 Beams Road were transferred to the State of Queensland, and the land was then transferred to Michael Gerard Pelling on the same day. Pelling was an entrepreneurial jockey who paid $88,000 for the site. In 2002 he applied to Council to develop it into a $1 million golf driving range and recreation centre, with a water park, skateboard facilities and possibly a women’s fitness centre. The proposal included a sixty-metre-wide conservation zone along the length of the creek.1
The first stage of building, which commenced in 2004, included a car park, a temporary building, lighting and netting. A fence was to be erected to minimise car park noise. In late 2006 Pelling, who had retired as a jockey the previous year after a race fall at Doomben, opened The Big Easy Golf and Leisure Centre. This day/night centre provided twenty-two “Covered Bays, a massive Grass Tree area, Sand Bunker, Chipping Green and a challenging Putting Green all fully lit.”2
In 2009 Pelling installed a novelty target to make the driving experience more enjoyable. When a golfer hit the interactive target on top of a model bus, “Dame Edna Average” popped up and yelled “Hello, possums.” On 22 December 2009 this five-tonne bus was flipped over during gale-force winds and three 1.5-tonne pipes were dragged more than sixty metres, resulting in over $10,000 in damages.3 4
- “‘Teeing off’ for Beams Rd golf range approval.” Bayside Star, 3 July 2002: 2. ↩︎
- https://www.golf.org.au/big-easy-golf/ (accessed 18 October 2022). ↩︎
- “Mostly fine for Christmas Day but more storms at the weekend.” The Courier-Mail, 24 December 2009: 3. ↩︎
- Wakabayashi 2025:181-182 ↩︎