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Pimpama is the epicentre of growth and the urban sprawl that links Brisbane and the Gold Coast

Southeast Queensland’s two biggest cities are now almost one - joined by one long sprawl of indistinct urban development. It’s home to the fastest-growing suburb outside a capital city in Australia, and it’s only going to become more crowded.

THE final green break along the M1 corridor is vanishing fast as the stretch between Brisbane and the Gold Coast becomes one continuous sprawl of urban development.

Latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that Pimpama on the northern Gold Coast has the biggest growth of any suburb in Queensland and is the fastest-growing outside a capital city anywhere in Australia.

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The arrival of an extra 3674 residents saw the population grow 29.5 per cent between 2017 and 2018 to hit 16,134 – the level it was forecast to reach in 2026.

The adjoining suburbs of Coomera and Upper Coomera-Willow Vale also feature in the 10 largest growth areas in the state.

Ranked seventh, Coomera’s population climbed 10 per cent to 16,611 as 1498 extra people arrived.

Mischa and Malwina Manley and daughter Kalina have made Pimpama their home. Picture:  Adam Head
Mischa and Malwina Manley and daughter Kalina have made Pimpama their home. Picture: Adam Head

On the other side of the highway, Upper Coomera-Willow Vale was one spot behind. Its population swelled by 1,376 people – 4.1 per cent – to 34,892 in a year.

Google aerial images show clearly how new residential communities and shopping centres are quickly swallowing up the expanse of green space which separated the industrial zone at Yatala and Ormeau from Dreamworld, which traditionally marked the start of the Gold Coast.

ShapingSEQ, the State Government’s regional plan for the next 25 years, indicates an “interurban break” around the Pimpama-Hotham Creek area will be retained for open space, rural production and outdoor recreation. It is largely low-lying sugar cane land which would be uneconomic to develop for housing.

The only other remaining undeveloped breaks along the motorway are on flood plains alongside the Logan and Albert Rivers.

Aerial view of the M1 winding through Logan City in 2015. Picture: Darren England
Aerial view of the M1 winding through Logan City in 2015. Picture: Darren England

URBAN expert professor Peter Spearrit says Pimpama’s expansion is the realisation of his grim prediction 15 years ago that southeast Queensland would become a single 200km city sprawl.

“The Gold Coast is now merging with Greater Brisbane. It’s just going to be part of Australia’s longest linear conurbation which will stretch from Noosa to the Tweed.

“The Gold Coast started as a collection of fairly distinct villages. The trouble with this incredibly rapid suburban growth is you end up with settlements that have no real core or sense that they are special. They just blur into one another.

“A sign over the highway saying you have just passed from Brisbane into Logan into the Gold Coast gives no sense of being in a distinct place,” says Prof Spearritt, a former president of the Brisbane Institute think-tank.

This view, taking around 1981, shows the Pacific Highway heading south to Oxenford and the Gold Coast, before the construction of Dreamworld. Picture: Supplied
This view, taking around 1981, shows the Pacific Highway heading south to Oxenford and the Gold Coast, before the construction of Dreamworld. Picture: Supplied

Shopping centres had become the equivalent of traditional village squares as the centre of communities but, with the rise online shopping retail, they too could have a finite future.

“The thing that’s bothered me for decades about the Gold Coast is that it’s had so little interest in green space. It’s really becoming Australia’s biggest suburb.”

The growth in the Pimpama/Coomera area so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

Official population projections prepared by the State Statistician’s Office – and revealed in The Courier-Mail’s recent Future SEQ series – show they will explode over the next quarter of a century.

By 2043, the combined total residents of Pimpama/Coomera will have ballooned from 18,610 in 2016 to a massive 104,347.

Upper Coomera will take the total for the three suburbs to 151,523 – equivalent to a city the size of Cairns today.

An aerial photograph of part of Coomera in 2018. Photo: Nearmap
An aerial photograph of part of Coomera in 2018. Photo: Nearmap

State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Minister Cameron Dick says the Government’s land supply and development monitoring report, launched in December, “indicates

there is enough land in the region, including Pimpama, Coomera and Upper Coomera, to accommodate expected growth.

“However, we will continue monitoring land supply and development across south-east Queensland, and delivering the infrastructure the region needs, to ensure growth is best managed.”

Leading demographer Bernard Salt says: “Its destiny was set 20 years ago.

“There’s an almost irresistible level of demand for housing along that corridor for access to Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

“It is arguably among the most in-demand places in Australia given its position. It’s still green and pleasant – unlike some of the broadacre development zones around other cities – and offers high lifestyle values.

“It’s attractive to young families – people in their late 20s and 30s setting up home – and lifestylers in their 30s and 40s trading up. They might have a boat and enjoy an active lifestyle. It’s a location offering options.”

Gradually, from the early years of this century, local farms have been bought up and land-banked by developers.

The first – and still biggest – major player was Mirvac, which began developing its $504 million Gainsborough Greens masterplanned community around a golf course of the same name in 2011.

“We saw the significant opportunity the area presented due to its strategic location at the northern end of the Gold Coast,” Mirvac Queensland residential general manager Warwick Bible says.

“We have a lot of professionals and tradies who either split their time between the Gold Coast and Brisbane, or who have members in their household who work in both cities.”

“As a major growth centre for the city, with the planned infrastructure and amenity — such as new schools, shops and parks — to match, we knew the area would be popular with homebuyers.”

Cane farm at Coomera in 2004 with new homes and the Gold Coast in the background.
Cane farm at Coomera in 2004 with new homes and the Gold Coast in the background.

Malwina Manley, who moved to Gainsborough Greens from Brisbane with husband Mischa and their daughter Kalina two years ago, said: “Here, you can work in Brisbane and still have the Gold Coast lifestyle.”

Mrs Manley drives to Tugun to work while her husband catches the train to Brisbane CBD.

“It’s a good place for families — lots of kindys and schools.”

The 2000th home was recently sold at Gainsborough Greens, with plans for 350 more to be built.

The median house price in the suburb has risen from $399,000 to $475,000 in five years but remains relatively affordable.

Mr Bible said more than two-thirds of the Gainsborough Greens development was dedicated to green open space and seven parks had already been incorporated.

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Other developments include the 53-hectare Pimpama Village housing estate on the former Coulters’ dairy and strawberry farm.

It is a two-minute drive from the new $100 million Pimpama Junction Shopping Centre, one of four in the area including the $1 billion Coomera Westfield mall. There are four public and private schools.

The City Council this week released tender documents for the construction of a $80 million sports hub including a 50-metre swimming pool, nine tennis courts, eight netball courts and a community centre.

Gold Coast Deputy Mayor Donna Gates, local councillor for the area for the past 12 years, says the change from the ‘’sleepy little one coffee shop, one store village’’ has been ‘’simply incredible”

She says with a clean slate, she would like to have seen a wider mix of housing development including larger lots. But there was no doubting he appeal of the area, nor the impact of additional traffic on congested feeder roads to the motorway.

It is a remarkable transition for what, until now, has remained the last rural township remaining along the motorway route snaking its way between the country’s third and sixth biggest cities.

From the late 1860s, Pimpama was the terminus for Cobb & Co coaches from Brisbane, leading to two hotels opening either side of Hotham Creek.

German settlers developed sugar plantations and the school opened in 1872. With the opening of a railway station in 1889, dairy farming became the predominant activity in the first half of the 20th Century.

But growth was slow. The 37 village residents recorded at the 1881 Census only grew to 100 by 1901 and half a century on in 1954, had reached only 232.

Even in 2006, barely 1000 people called Pimpama home.

For decades, its most famous figure was the statue of a nameless soldier standing, head bowed, in the grounds of the Uniting Church alongside the old Pacific Highway.

He was known as “Halfway Harry’’ by generations of day-trippers, who used the spot as a handy place to stop for a sandwich and a cuppa to break the journey midway between the capital city and what was still known as the South Coast rather than the Gold Coast.

The new highway bypassed Pimpama in the 1960s and a duplication of the Coomera River crossing made the road four lanes in each direction from 1970.

Today, around 180,000 vehicles a day travel that section of the M1 and the explosion of people living in Pimpama and Coomera will pour tens of thousands of extra commuters onto the already-gridlocked Pacific Motorway which is straddled by the suburbs.

The Pacific Highway at Movieworld, Helensvale, in 1993.
The Pacific Highway at Movieworld, Helensvale, in 1993.

The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads has gazetted a footprint for a route it’s calling the Coomera Connector which would dissect both suburbs.

Effectively a second M1, the six-lane highway would run almost parallel to the east of the existing motorway for 45 kilometres from Nerang in the south, through Coomera, Pimpama and Stapylton to link with the Pacific and Logan Motorways at Loganholme.

The plan for the eastern corridor alternative has been around since 1990 when it was proposed as a tollway.

The ‘’koala highway’’ plan as it was later dubbed provoked outrage as it ran through sensitive wildlife habit in Daisy Hill and Redlands, helping to bring down the Goss Labor Government.

The new version avoids the problem by merging with the existing motorway south of that area. But while the estimated cost of the route in the early 1990s was $250 million, today it would run into billions.

Cr Gates says she is ‘’a bit of a doubting Thomas” that the Coomera Connector will ever be built given the extreme cost and says the emphasis should be on upgrading the existing highway and interchanges.

Transport and main Roads Minister Mark Bailey says that is what the State Government is doing, spending $74 million on an upgrade of Exit 54 at Coomera and planning a $25 million improvement at Exit 57 at Oxenford.

An aerial view of Pimpama taken in April. as its growth continues.
An aerial view of Pimpama taken in April. as its growth continues.

“We’re planning for the Coomera Connector, but there remains a lot of work to do before this project could come to life, including further consultation with the community,” he said.

Salt speculates that technology could solve the problem for the government, with the advent of autonomous vehicles in a decade or so enabling traffic to travel much more closely, boosting efficiency of the existing motorway and negating the need for a duplication.

Spearritt, meanwhile, says the one plus of enormous population growth in the area is that traffic congestion is no so extreme, governments have no choice but to look to public transport as the solution.

Pimpama is located between the Ormeau and Coomera train stations. Reflecting the population growth, the Palaszczuk Government has committed to giving the suburb its own station by 2023 — the first time it will have had one since the old station was closed in the 1960s.

The heavy rail line connects to the popular and successful Gold Coast Light Rail system just a couple of stops away at Helensvale.

A proposal by the Southeast Queensland Council of Mayors for a rapid rail network enabling passengers to travel to Brisbane from the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast or Toowoomba within 45 minutes was a key point of the action plan to emerge from The Courier-Mail’s recent FutureSEQ series examining the impacts and opportunities of the region’s massive growth over the next quarter-century.

The logic is that with efficient transport connectivity, southeast Queensland can thrive as a collection of individual cities rather than becoming one enormous metropolis like Sydney or Melbourne.

This week’s federal Budget included funding for a business case on a rapid rail system between the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Similar studies are already underway on the routes from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba.

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Original URL: https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/insight/pimpama-is-the-epicentre-of-growth-and-the-urban-sprawl-that-links-brisbane-and-the-gold-coast/news-story/bc5835d3768f429cb4032e8b28e8f2b3