Gold Coast council’s ‘Beehive’ on borrowed time

IT’S been the star of at least one movie, and hosted innumerable events but the city’s Beehive at the council precinct is on borrowed time.

Gold Coast Council Chambers at Evandale. Picture: JERAD WILLIAMS

DO you remember the legendary actor Ray Barrett in the 1980s cult film Goodbye Paradise where he was an ex-copper roaming around the seedy side of Surfers Paradise?

The answer is probably “possibly not” because this Raymond Chandler slice of Aussie film noir quickly disappeared as the fanfare began for 1984’s Coolangatta Gold which featured disco dancing and ironman Grant Kenny at his muscular peak.

But Brisbane-born Barrett with windblown black hair and battered features was sublime as ex-copper Michael Stacey, in an ill-fitting white jacket and tie askew as he investigated a cult and several murders.

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Ray Barrett on the Gold Coast in the film Goodbye Paradise.

His search begins by shuffling up the sand dunes at Main Beach with the Surfers skyline in the background, before he steps inside some strip clubs only to find himself at the cult leader’s quarters.

Former council staffers know the film location of the semi-naked and chanting hippies. It was the foyer of the then Evandale chambers which they nicknamed “the Beehive”.

Barrett and his enormous talent was lost to our screens in 2009 but the ghostly figure of Stacey is possibly stumbling around the Beehive now before it is to be bulldozed for the new cultural precinct.

“I think it’s a bit of a tragedy. On the Gold Coast, all they do is pull down things,” a former council staffer says.

Gold Coast Council Chambers at Evandale. Picture: JERAD WILLIAMS

“It was seen as an icon, it was really something people came to see as part of their tourist visit here. It was something quite different for a municipal building.”

Built in 1976 and the first building to open on the Evandale site, the Beehive like most ageing Coast beauties was not without its flaws.

The roof leaked and birds flew in only to be swept out the following morning.

As it continues to provide a temporary home for the Gold Coast Titans, veteran Southport city councillor Dawn Crichlow has become its loudest supporter.

The Evandale council chambers and Gold Coast Arts Centre from the Q1.

“It was a wonderful civic space. We had sit down dinners there,” she says.

After Sunland developer Soheil Obedian this week revealed his plans for a his $600 million Mariner’s Cove redevelopment would include a cultural precinct, Cr Crichlow wants a rethink about spending ratepayer money.

Staffers are being shuffled out of the much younger Riverside building which will be revamped to become temporary home for the city’s expanding art collection.

“It’s a crappy building,” Cr Crichlow adds.

Finance committee chairman William Owen-Jones strongly disagrees, telling your columnist: “The Beehive building has reached the end of its life. It’s one of the most inefficient buildings from an operating point of view in the city. It has a glass dome that faces the western sun.”

The ‘Beehive’ from the air.

Surfers Paradise city councillor Lex Bell has wonderful memories but cannot justify fixing the Beehive “for sentimental reasons”.

He recalls a visiting mayor from Tahiti was so impressed with its design that he once asked for plans and began building a replica in Papeete.

When the visiting mayor later complained that “the roof leaks”, he found a sympathetic ear.

“How did you know about that,” the mayor asked Cr Bell.

The visitors had followed to the Coast plans to the letter, roof defects and all.