Will mythical swamp creature ‘Merrimac Bunyip’ feature in Clive Palmer’s planned floodplain development?

CLIVE Palmer could soon be the director and star of a horror movie on the Gold Coast says Paul Weston.

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CLIVE Palmer could soon be the director and star of a horror movie on the Gold Coast.

The production notes are sketchy but the basis for the script can be found in an application by his planners to council which sets up the beginning of a narrative on the Merrimac floodplain.

This is where the billionaire plans to build two residential developments, one on nine holes at his Robina course and the other at the old Avica Resort site in Gooding Drive.

PALMER TEES OFF TO BUILD MINI CITIES

Clive Palmer pictured at Paradise Point near his Sovereign Island home. Pic by Luke Marsden.

The Coast scene in the 1960s was “one of fibro, timber and brick family homes and weekenders” which would become dwarfed by the first high- rise apartments.

Hinterland farm houses were surrounded by sheds and dairies and linked by dirt tracks until grazier and realtor Arthur Earle in 1964 bought up 3000 acres of land for development between Nerang and Mudgeeraba.

“At this stage, the future site of Robina was still untouched — a wilderness of lagoons, paper barks and casuarinas and home of the mythical Merrimac Bunyip,” the Palmer planners wrote.

A bunyip, down yonder in that swamp at Merrimac?

Your columnist discovered cryptonaturalist Tim the Yowie Man left Canberra in 2008 on a mission to find this swamp monster.

“There was a heap of sightings there in the late 1800s and up into the 1970s. The creature had shaggy black hair and was bigger than a seal,” Tim said.

“It had a gut-wrenching roar. Some of the old-timers I spoke to, they said you would hear one bunyip call out to another bunyip. It could be heard as far away as Burleigh.”

Further investigations by Tim found him exploring a “bunyip hole” — a deep stretch of water towards the edge of the Merrimac estate where this tale suddenly becomes murky.

A news clipping from The Courier Mail in 1938 suggested the bunyip could be a crocodile after Nerang Shire Council “sanitary contractor” Charles Finamor confronted a 10ft reptile at a rubbish tip at the swamp’s northern end.

Tim said in 1965 after more bunyip sightings, members of the Nerang Crocodile Club burnt an effigy of the creature, outraged it was “taking credit for their crocodile”.

More development has caused crocodiles and bunyips to become “endangered species”, and Tim suggests Mr Palmer should recognise their heritage by naming his new suburb Bunyip Estate.

Tor Hundloe, Bond University’s Professor of Environmental Management, recalls as a child the wonder of the swamp and Tom Sawyer tales of “the Burleigh Bunyip”.

Clive Palmer with dinosaur Jeff the Trex at his Sunshine Coast resort.

“Some people reckon it used to swim around. It was like a crocodile. It was hairy, a bit like a yowie,” Professor Hundloe said.

“There is still a little bit of swamp where Clive’s going. I reckon the bunyip is still there. You know it doesn’t tolerate people coming into its area.”

This scenario is considerably more frightening than Mr Palmer’s 10m model tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed Jeff, at his Coolum resort on the Sunshine Coast.

Bunyips come at night, mostly. And in Merrimac, no one will hear you scream.