Dreamworld Big Brother house: “urban explorers” catch teenagers vandalising location

It was once the home to a groundbreaking reality television series turning average Aussies into overnight celebrities. Now frustrated “urban explorers” have revealed footage of teenage vandals smashing up the abandoned Big Brother house.

FRUSTRATED “urban explorers” have revealed photos and videos of what appear to be teenagers smashing up the Gold Coast’s abandoned Big Brother house.

The vision was obtained by an urban exploration devotee who, like growing numbers of others, has made a hobby of going into abandoned buildings and other man-made structures.

Images appear to show an unseen person smashing walls and a window in the former location of the hit reality TV show.

The abandoned Big Brother house, which has been damaged by vandals.

“Check on what they are doing,” an unseen person can be heard saying on the video.

A photo, which appears to have been taken from behind the two-way mirrors that were used by film crews to record the every move of the Big Brother contestants, shows a young man with a sledge hammer over his shoulder and a young woman posing with her camera phone.

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“He’s definitely holding a sledgey,” an urban explorer told the Gold Coast Bulletin on the condition of anonymity.

Vandals are breaking into the abandoned former Dreamworld Big Brother house. Picture Glenn Hampson.

He said the complex in Foxwell Rd, Coomera, was a popular local site for those who risk trespassing charges to take photographs of abandoned locations.

“We take nothing but photos but I was told these guys were smashing up glass everywhere,” he said.

He said urban explorers disliked vandals because it made their lives difficult, drawing police attention to abandoned areas.

“It’s just disrespectful. These sites should be kept in place until they are developed for something, not trashed,” he said.

Former Gold Coast Bulletin reporter Jack Houghton reclines near the site which has been reportedly smashed.

“I get graffiti artists, I get homeless people using these places but with vandals no one wins.

“It makes it harder for us to take photos when vandals break into places, because residents will make complaints to the police and we get crashed by the cops who charge us.”

While the practice of “urbanex” is often described as an underground subculture, the “urban exploration” hash tag on Instagram has 3.1 million posts while the “abandoned” hash tag has 5.9 million.

A number of documentaries have been made on urban exploration.

“We take photos because they last forever, capturing a spot. It’s like a race against the bulldozers,” the urban explorer said.

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When the Bulletin visited the Coomera site yesterday, some gates leading to the Big Brother house appeared to be missing padlocks. Barbed wire fences appeared to have been bent out of shape in some areas.

A Dreamworld spokeswoman said the park was “made aware of trespassers at the former Big Brother house’’ on Monday.

A security guard checked the area and found no one on the site.

The site has been owned and operated by Queensland Investment Corporation since 2009.

When contacted for comment, a QIC spokesman said the organisation was considering its next step in regard to contacting police.