Gold Coast mystery: Do you know these couples from 1980s wedding photos?

DO you recognise this couple? If so you could help solve a Gold Coast mystery 30 years in the making. A treasure trove of wedding pictures from the 1980s have been uncovered and their discoverer wants to reunite them with the owners.

The old Paradise Country site, Beaudesert-Nerang Road, Nerang.

IT’S a 1980s mystery fit for Magnum PI to solve.

A treasure trove of wedding photos hidden away for up to 30 years has been discovered at a former Gold Coast tourist attraction and the hunt is on to find the owners.

One of the happy couples. Do you know them?

At least three portraits of matrimonial magic were recently found at Nerang’s Country Paradise Parklands, dating back to the site’s heyday as a tourist attraction.

Hidden away in the site’s former function centre, the Nerang Community Association is now hoping to track down the happy couples or their relatives and return the photographs.

The wedding party.

Association president Lynn Ogden said the portraits were an insight into an earlier time in the city’s history.

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“These pictures appear to have been taken in the mid to late 1980s and we are really keen to reunite them with the people who are in the shots,” she said.

Another recently rediscovered wedding photo.

“We do not know what their life’s journey has been since the pictures were taken but it could be that there are families who would be delighted to get these, if not the couples themselves.

The old Paradise Country site before it was revamped.

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“It’s a big enigma but whoever took the pictures did a great job and now we just want anyone who knows these people to step forward.”

Some of the pictures were taken by Tony Ciappara, now a mortgage broker, who was a photographer on the Coast in the 1980s and had a photographic studio at Pacific Fair.

Mr Ciappara is overseas and not contactable.

Paradise Country was an Australiana-themed attraction from the mid 1980s until the late 1990s. It was popular for its weddings, sheep-shearing and children’s parties.

The photographer’s signature.

Following its closure, the site fell into disrepair in the 2000s before it was bought by the Gold Coast City Council and transformed into a community facility.