![]() More than 26,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that Port Macquarie-Hastings council reject Crowe’s application to build 11 holiday cabins on the site. The passion the koalas inspire – and the fear that they might soon be gone – helps explain the massive success of the campaign to leave Fantasy Glades as it is. The council’s most recent koala recovery strategy, which was published in 2018, found the area’s koalas would be “functionally extinct within the next 50 years” without drastic action.Ī koala statue painted like Dame Edna on the Hello Koalas Sculpture Trail. As the town expands west into previously untouched bushland, koalas are losing habitat and increasingly running foul of cars and dogs. When the local koala hospital appealed for $25,000 in donations, it was flooded with nearly $8m from around the world.Įven before Black Summer, Port Macquarie’s koalas were in serious danger. ![]() A Biolink study in September estimated that 34% of the koala population at the Lake Innes Nature Reserve on Port’s south-west fringe was killed. Mimicking Berlin’s Buddy Bears tourism campaign, large fibreglass koalas are dotted around town, each one painted by a local artist to resemble figures like Dame Edna, Lachlan Macquarie, and – in one especially unsettling case – a Japanese geisha.īut Black Summer raised real fears that Port Macquarie’s unofficial mascots could be wiped out. One of the largest koala populations in the country lives in the greater Port Macquarie area. Two parts of Port Macquarie’s image have stayed the same: its beaches, and its koalas. The state government was forced to sack the council, launch a public inquiry and appoint an administrator, the delightfully named Dick Persson.īefore and after of Cinderella’s Castle Before and after of Cinderella’s Castle. Its fumbling attempt to rebrand as a regional arts and culture hub went belly-up when the Glasshouse, a pristine performing arts centre a street back from the waterfront, went a cool $60m over its original $6.7m budget. The long push to market itself as a Schoolies destination was always undercut by the fact that there’s never really been anywhere to go for a drink, much less a big night out. ![]() Like a teenager trying out different looks, Port Macquarie has fumbled with its changing identity as it has grown from a sleepy beachside town into a major regional centre. On Port’s outskirts, swathes of forest have been bulldozed to make way for massive new housing developments and shopping plazas. Like everywhere else, house prices have risen astronomically. Charles Sturt University opened a campus in 2012, bringing in hundreds of students. Port Macquarie is experiencing a sustained population boom as retirees and young families migrate north from Sydney. (It was later recovered, minus a finger.)īut under the surface, a lot has changed. Last month, a life-size fibreglass statue of Colonel Sanders was stolen from the local KFC. Sustained public opposition to the introduction of fluoride in the town drinking water in 2012 has culminated in a planned non-binding poll. For more than two years, the biggest story in town was the approval, construction and opening of Port’s first Kmart. On the rare occasion Port Macquarie makes the news for something other than a horrific natural disaster, it’s usually for something very weird. While he had never visited the park in its heyday, he saw potential in the decaying buildings – and prime location – for a cafe and destination venue that trades on the nostalgia of locals and former tourists. When I started cleaning everything out there were condoms, beer bottles, you name it Jeff CroweĪfter changing hands several times, businessman Jeff Crowe bought the site in 2015. Vague plans for a new park never materialised. In 2002, the owners, George and Pat Spry who bought the business in the 1980s, retired for family reasons. Unlike many of its counterparts – think the old Big Banana theme park at Coffs Harbour, or the ill-fated Leyland Brothers fibro Uluru outside Port Stephens – Fantasy Glades didn’t close because it ran out of money. ![]() With a part-storybook, part-cribbed-from-Disney theme that would never escape a lawsuit today, it drew more than three million visitors from its opening in 1968 to its closure in 2002. Photographs: Carly Earlįor nearly 35 years, Fantasy Glades was one of the most successful and beloved of the mid-sized family fun parks that once dotted the coast between Sydney and Brisbane. Two of the old buildings on the original site.
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