Speaker 1: Slippery Slope, a true crime podcast about maunt iSER and
Speaker 1: the Missing water Slide.
Speaker 2: With Dave O'Neill and Brad Oaks.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to our podcast Slippery Slope from Dave O'Neill.
Speaker 2: And it's Brad Oaks.
Speaker 3: Yes, now this is the second episode. If you haven't
Speaker 3: listened to the first one, we'll just recap it very quickly.
Speaker 3: We went to Mount Isaac.
Speaker 2: We're doing some shows up in northern Glenday.
Speaker 3: We're comedians. If you don't know, we're not journalists, so
Speaker 3: you can stop all the feedback saying we've had no feedback,
Speaker 3: but anyway, we're not We're not hardcore journalists. We're comedians.
Speaker 3: But we discovered a pretty amazing story.
Speaker 2: We thought this town needed a water slide, but.
Speaker 3: Did it get it? What happened There was a bit
Speaker 3: of an incident. There were a few incidents. It's a
Speaker 3: pretty incredible story, we thought, with international ramifications. Even though
Speaker 3: we're talking about maunt iSER, which is the middle of Queensland,
Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere, this story went around the world.
Speaker 4: As I said in the end of the last episode,
Speaker 4: you don't just go to Clark Rubber and buy a
Speaker 4: massive water slide.
Speaker 2: No, you have to look elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Now, Brad. Water slides they seem to be a particularly
Speaker 3: Australian thing. I know they're not, but we sort of
Speaker 3: owned them, and particularly Queensland is my memory, because we're
Speaker 3: Melbourne guys. Now, we didn't have water slides at our
Speaker 3: pools and we were growing up, did.
Speaker 4: We No, But a lot of us in Melbourne live
Speaker 4: very close to the coast.
Speaker 2: Yes, so we went to the beach.
Speaker 3: Yes, there were no water slides there, No.
Speaker 2: And you know you'd either jump off the pier or.
Speaker 3: You serve boogie board.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't think even when I was a kid, I
Speaker 4: didn't really notice that. I felt like that they started
Speaker 4: to hit in the late seventies early eighties, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it was mainly Queensland. So I remember going up
Speaker 3: to queens in nineteen eighty. Dad drove us up there
Speaker 3: in his Earth and me and my twin brother Glen
Speaker 3: were in the back. We went to Noosa and on
Speaker 3: the way we stopped at a water slide, which might
Speaker 3: have been the sun Shoin coast of the Gold Coaster
Speaker 3: was one of them. And I was on the side
Speaker 3: of a hill like a squiggly worm like obviously a
Speaker 3: couple of dads had made it. Was it embedded, Yes,
Speaker 3: it was embedded into the ground and occasionally the story
Speaker 3: would come through of the kid flying off into the grass.
Speaker 3: And that was my first memory of a water slide.
Speaker 2: Although my first memory of water slide was actually Geelong.
Speaker 3: They still have a water slide park.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I haven't looked it up to see when they first
Speaker 4: got it, but it was when Geelong started pretending that
Speaker 4: they were Queensland.
Speaker 2: Yes, well they had to do something they did.
Speaker 4: You know, it's positioned perfectly because you come up to freeway,
Speaker 4: you see it. Parents must have to distract their children
Speaker 4: because you just want to go when.
Speaker 2: I go on the waters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not there anymore. I think they closed that down,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure. But Queensland and their relationship with water slides,
Speaker 3: because there's a hotter climate, it's warmer up there. They
Speaker 3: get a lot of holiday makers from down South Townsvill's
Speaker 3: got one. They're all over the shop.
Speaker 4: I suppose it's amusement moving parts. Either it's not.
Speaker 3: Like a ride, you know, or a chair roller coaster.
Speaker 4: Roller coaster was you know the river Caves or something
Speaker 4: like that. It's basically you erect it and bolted together,
Speaker 4: and you know, just every now and then you get
Speaker 4: rid of a body.
Speaker 2: But anyway, more getting rid of bodies.
Speaker 3: Let's talk to someone who knows more about us than this.
Speaker 3: Andrew pots is at a Gold Coast Journals. Here's the
Speaker 3: assistant chief of staff for the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Speaker 5: How are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're both good. Now, how long have you lived
Speaker 3: in Queensland?
Speaker 6: For?
Speaker 3: Andrew in the area.
Speaker 7: For my entire life actually, so I was born on
Speaker 7: the Gold Coast in nineteen eighty seven, so it's been
Speaker 7: a while.
Speaker 3: What's your first memories of water slides in Queensland?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean there were always around.
Speaker 7: Of course we're the perfect place for it with the
Speaker 7: weather and everything, but probably going past the theme parks
Speaker 7: that we have here. When I was a little kid,
Speaker 7: so the early nineteen nineties, you'd always see advertised on
Speaker 7: TV big slides that they had at Wet and Wild,
Speaker 7: at the SeaWorld and dream World.
Speaker 3: What's your knowledge of the history. Sure, your parents used
Speaker 3: to talk about it. You're a journalist. Where was the
Speaker 3: first water slide on the Goldie?
Speaker 7: The first major water thing we had was probably Caid's
Speaker 7: County water Park, which today is known as Wet and Wild.
Speaker 7: So that opened in late nineteen eighty four. Of course
Speaker 7: there was already some small water parks and water features,
Speaker 7: but that was the first really major one that was
Speaker 7: entirely based around water slides. That's up at Oxenford. It's
Speaker 7: next to what's now Movie World.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Then subsequently been ones at SeaWorld and then later at
Speaker 7: dream World. So it's one of those things that the
Speaker 7: gol you might say, has quite the addiction to water slides.
Speaker 2: Are there any waterfalls around that area?
Speaker 3: Waterfalls?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I had this theory that the water slide
Speaker 4: was somebody standing at the top of a waterfall and
Speaker 4: then they slipped and they fell down, and somebody said
Speaker 4: that looks fantastic.
Speaker 5: Right, Yes there are.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if you go up to curumbin Valley, there's a
Speaker 7: thing called the Crumb and Rock Pools and that's got
Speaker 7: some waterfalls there and little rapids that go into the
Speaker 7: main body of water.
Speaker 2: It could be right.
Speaker 3: I remember Grundies now that that was eighties, wasn't it
Speaker 3: that had the water slide?
Speaker 5: It certainly did. Yeah. Grundies is actually a really good example.
Speaker 7: So the brainchild of TV producer Reg Grundy, who later
Speaker 7: went on to produce Neighbors, among many other things. But
Speaker 7: he decided in the eighties that he wanted to open
Speaker 7: a theme park on the Gold Coast. But unlike the
Speaker 7: ones that we have today, this was almost entirely indoors,
Speaker 7: with one exception water slides. So if you look at
Speaker 7: the Service Paradise beachfront where the Cavil Mall is today,
Speaker 7: you know there's a famous Service Paradise sign.
Speaker 5: That wasn't there yet.
Speaker 7: So huge three four story tall floods which they called
Speaker 7: the flumes.
Speaker 3: Oh right, I remember that. Now this is the one.
Speaker 3: Now I thought this was an urban meath Brad remember
Speaker 3: the story someone put a razor blade in the water
Speaker 3: slide and kids got injured? Did that actually happen there?
Speaker 7: Well, that was actually the thing. It was always widely
Speaker 7: understood as an urban legend. However, I've met numerous people
Speaker 7: over the years who worked at Grundies in the early
Speaker 7: eighties and they swear up and down it happened, and
Speaker 7: it happened there. The rumor was that they were a
Speaker 7: couple of lazor blades were stuck with I think chewing
Speaker 7: gum into some of the rivets coming down that slide.
Speaker 7: But I've never I've never been able. I've never found
Speaker 7: anyone that actually says it happened to them.
Speaker 3: Wrong with people they went around when we were kid,
Speaker 3: I just assumed it was.
Speaker 4: I believed too that somebody ramly scissors A movie world.
Speaker 3: Yeah happened as well.
Speaker 5: I've never heard that one really.
Speaker 3: Dream world had the Blue Lagoon? Is it still there?
Speaker 7: It closed in about two thousand and six when they
Speaker 7: opened White Water World. But if I'm not mistaken, the
Speaker 7: physical remains of the Blue Lagoon are still at the
Speaker 7: back of the park, but they've been closed and inaccessible
Speaker 7: for years.
Speaker 2: It would make a great episode of Scooby Doo.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've gotten away with of these damn kids. Now,
Speaker 3: how much do you reckon? It's part of the tourist
Speaker 3: attraction of the Gold Coast and just in Queensland in general,
Speaker 3: that is the phenomenon of water slides and theme parks.
Speaker 3: It must be a huge bonus, is it?
Speaker 5: Very much so?
Speaker 7: I mean theme parks of course are a massive part
Speaker 7: of our economy, going back to the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy, so back then we had a chairlift. Actually
Speaker 7: that went up the Miami Hill and then that later
Speaker 7: became Magic Mountain theme Park.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, yes.
Speaker 7: Which was a massive deal in the nineteen eighties particularly,
Speaker 7: And here's a little fun factoid for you. So their
Speaker 7: mascot with a character called Raymondo Rabbit. I actually own
Speaker 7: one of the two Raymondo Rabbit suits.
Speaker 2: Wow, are you trying to get that other one?
Speaker 5: I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened
Speaker 5: to that one.
Speaker 7: So I've got the suit and I picked it up
Speaker 7: a couple of years ago for one hundred bucks on
Speaker 7: Facebook Marketplace. And I've had people ask if I perhaps
Speaker 7: wanted to part with it, but no, it's the collection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fantastic, sir. You like an amateur story and
Speaker 3: this is great. My memory of the first theme park
Speaker 3: I went to in Queensad was SeaWorld.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 7: It was, Yeah, So that was founded by a guy
Speaker 7: called Keith Williams who had founded a thing called the
Speaker 7: Ski Gardens out in Krara on the Nerang River, and
Speaker 7: he then I think it's nineteen seventy four, relocated to
Speaker 7: the now SeaWorld site and then yeah, he installed a
Speaker 7: bunch of slides there.
Speaker 5: The dolphins and it sort of just grew from there.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 7: But back in about nineteen ninety they had the Cast
Speaker 7: of Neighbors come up to the Gold Coast from Erinsborough
Speaker 7: and visit SeaWorld for reasons I don't remember at this point,
Speaker 7: and there's lots of loving shots of the cast going
Speaker 7: down the slides. It was used as quite a big
Speaker 7: marketing tool for the Gold Coast, both for I suppose
Speaker 7: people around Australia and for the UK audience as.
Speaker 3: A general Queensland resident and journo. Have you noticed in
Speaker 3: the last say ten to fifteen years, not just the
Speaker 3: Gold Coast have gone onto water slides. There seems to
Speaker 3: be a lot of water slides because we're talking about
Speaker 3: Mount iSER. Have you noticed that I have?
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 7: I think it's probably something to do with it's a
Speaker 7: cheaper thing to build these days than it was back
Speaker 7: in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. I mean even
Speaker 7: caravan parks these days often have them. Yeah, that used
Speaker 7: to be quite unusual. Some of these parks have like
Speaker 7: really intricate structures, so it's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I was talking about this with Dave is there one
Speaker 4: that's embedded into the mountain.
Speaker 3: There used to be one in the mountain in the
Speaker 3: Sunshine Coast. I reckon it was like a swirly like
Speaker 3: a snake on the side of a mountain as you
Speaker 3: drove along the namboor yeahah.
Speaker 7: I know, I know the one you're talking about. I
Speaker 7: don't remember the name of it. I remember going up
Speaker 7: to the Sunny Coast when I was a kid and
Speaker 7: they'd advertise it on TV and you'd see the people
Speaker 7: going down it, and I was always really jealous.
Speaker 5: Because I always sort of looked really really cool.
Speaker 3: Andrew, thanks for talking to us. That's fantastic, no problem
Speaker 3: at all. How it help Andrew pots that year. He
Speaker 3: knew his stuffed didn't.
Speaker 4: He sure did. I bet that's very exciting at parties too.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 2: He knows a lot about water slides, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: But he knows a lot about just Queensland history in general,
Speaker 3: and not just the academic stuff. He knows the kitchies stuff,
Speaker 3: which I love. You know, who started SeaWorld all that
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 4: Stuff, And unlike us, because he's a journalist, that would
Speaker 4: have all been fact checked.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's succinct. Yeah, so man iSER water slides. Queensland
Speaker 3: seems to be all fine, But Brad, you can't open
Speaker 3: up something that a nearby town has already got, or
Speaker 3: can you? Because an hour down the road from maun
Speaker 3: iSER is a place called klon Curry. It's not as
Speaker 3: big as Mount iSER yep, but they do have a
Speaker 3: water slide.
Speaker 2: Size is relevant.
Speaker 3: Well, let's hear from Daniel Slay, the former mayor of
Speaker 3: Mount iSER. Yeah, they get a bit obsessed by clon Curry.
Speaker 6: Clon Curry has the great water sligne, but it suits
Speaker 6: their population, which is four thousand people and it's quite small.
Speaker 6: So that was what was being suggested to us as
Speaker 6: a one million dollar water slide. So I knew that
Speaker 6: we need to go bigger, bigger better. We needed all
Speaker 6: these communities that are all around Manizer, and we are
Speaker 6: the hub for the whole north West Stripe. There's nothing
Speaker 6: for nine hundred k's away, so we need a reason
Speaker 6: for them to come and use their water slide. Because
Speaker 6: if we've got the same size water slide as klon Curry,
Speaker 6: just go to klan Curry and use their water slide.
Speaker 6: But we've got twenty thousand people, so we need something
Speaker 6: bigger and better.
Speaker 3: Well, we all want something bigger and better, don't we.
Speaker 2: Brad, We're sure. Remember there was a push many many
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 4: If you don't know about the fairy penguins in Philham Island,
Speaker 4: it's a ninety one hundred minute drive down to see.
Speaker 3: The massive tourist attraction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but people were talking about trying to get them closer.
Speaker 4: You just get the popular ones and you move them
Speaker 4: and the others follow.
Speaker 3: Commedians to do a routine. We used just said they're
Speaker 3: all robots because the thirteenth one always falls over the
Speaker 3: great colon cold.
Speaker 2: Yes, stump penguins, yes.
Speaker 3: Stunt penguins, yes, noting about penguins though, no, sorry, no,
Speaker 3: that's all right. They do they do slide, They do slide,
Speaker 3: they do, and they've often they can often use in
Speaker 3: water slide advertising as well.
Speaker 2: Penguins exactly.
Speaker 3: Okay, So clon Curry, well we need to go to
Speaker 3: the source. We need to actually speak to someone in
Speaker 3: clon Curry. There's no one better though than the mayor.
Speaker 9: Do you want to come into places as give you
Speaker 9: a shoulder?
Speaker 10: Greg Campbell, mayor of the Cloncurry Shire clon Curry was
Speaker 10: here first where over one hundred and fifty years old.
Speaker 10: Man iSER was one hundred I think last year. You know,
Speaker 10: most things that has grown man iSER has come from
Speaker 10: clon Curry.
Speaker 9: Their radio was started with.
Speaker 10: Great assistance from the Clonkerry Radio Committee. But the two
Speaker 10: places work together. You know, the man iSER Radio is
Speaker 10: only really as good as far as the competitors go
Speaker 10: because it's the weekend after the clon Carry one and
Speaker 10: the mine and the smelter, and that side of man
Speaker 10: Isa only works really well now because of all the
Speaker 10: copper concentrate coming from the Cloncerry Shire going up to
Speaker 10: keep it full. So you know, we really work well together,
Speaker 10: even though from Cloncurry we know that clon Carry West
Speaker 10: is just a suburb of c Curry.
Speaker 3: WO it's fighting words, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And I love a bit of rivalry.
Speaker 3: What other famous I mean in football's Carlton, Collingwood, Fort Holden.
Speaker 3: There's not two giant prawns that's Bana.
Speaker 2: Was there a prawn and a yabby?
Speaker 3: I think there might be. There's only one giant pineapple
Speaker 3: that's in Naanbore.
Speaker 4: But also see the thing here isn't necessarily that the
Speaker 4: rivalry is the actual critter so much as it's the giant.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a giant marina, a giant sheep in yas.
Speaker 3: Giant strawberry and yours shep.
Speaker 4: Yeah and so and all these things that they're trying
Speaker 4: to lure people there. Other kids can go and play
Speaker 4: on a giant banana or yabby. I think there's two bananas.
Speaker 3: There's another banana part from the Cops Harbor one which
Speaker 3: isn't even that big medium sized banana.
Speaker 2: It was and it was green and.
Speaker 3: It goes brown in summer. Okay, so there's a there's
Speaker 3: a rivalry between Matt Arjen and clon Curry, But hey,
Speaker 3: there's been no mention of the water side. What is
Speaker 3: the mayor of Klon curry Greek Camp what does he
Speaker 3: think about when he hears about man Eyes is going
Speaker 3: to get a water slide.
Speaker 9: We had a bit of a smirk when we heard that.
Speaker 10: You know, there was a caveat that it just had
Speaker 10: to be better than clon Curry's and we knew they.
Speaker 9: Could probably be bigger, it might be brighter, but.
Speaker 10: It was never going to be better because it was
Speaker 10: just in Mount een oOoOO.
Speaker 4: Finding words, but that is commensurate with population. Yes, clon
Speaker 4: Curry is only a few thousand people.
Speaker 3: Three thousand I think three thousand, and maunt Eyes is
Speaker 3: twenty or something, So you.
Speaker 2: Could argue that you would have to build a bigger one.
Speaker 3: And then one of klon Curry's not staffed. It's just
Speaker 3: sits there. They don't need attendance, that don't.
Speaker 2: Need don't need a lifesaver on Jinny, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've seen it. I was there with him and it's
Speaker 3: not bad. You can hear the water slide in the
Speaker 3: background as we're chatting. So man Ey doesnt want to
Speaker 3: build a bigger and better one than Cloncurry. Has there
Speaker 3: been any examples in Australia near the World of a
Speaker 3: town getting a water slide as a tourist attraction. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously we spoke to Andrew about the Gold Coast. That's
Speaker 3: obviously different. There's a big urban area, there's heaps of
Speaker 3: theme parks, but a small town getting a water slide.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of anything, Brat, I have not, Dave,
Speaker 3: have you? Well, there is a place in w a
Speaker 3: good Colan, remote w A and they got a water
Speaker 3: slide which changed their tourism. Ah, should we talk to
Speaker 3: someone from there.
Speaker 4: Okay, and just before we talk to that person, thing
Speaker 4: about having the water slide as an attraction. If you
Speaker 4: have to sell it to people, which we'll discuss later,
Speaker 4: then that is a unique selling point to people to say.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like that episode of The Simpsons, the monorail.
Speaker 4: It's like saying to people, we're gonna have water slide.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, why don't care. It would be bigger than Cloncurry.
Speaker 4: I'm in yes, yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, And what's Springfield's of course arrival in the Simpsons Selbyville.
Speaker 3: Let's ring someone from Cooland and talk to them about
Speaker 3: their water slide. We've got John Bell on the line.
Speaker 3: He's from Corland. Good afternoon, Well, good morning. Where you are?
Speaker 8: Good morning? How are you this morning?
Speaker 3: Tell everyone where is calling it?
Speaker 4: In?
Speaker 8: W A christ As three hundred kilometers from Albany, three
Speaker 8: hundred kilometers from Bumbree, three hundred kilometers from Perth, three.
Speaker 3: Hundred kumeters from everywhere?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sound of it.
Speaker 8: Oh, it's fantastic. We're so close to every coast.
Speaker 3: So, John, you involved in getting a water slide for cooling.
Speaker 3: So who came up with the idea?
Speaker 8: Well? Really, I think it came from the school.
Speaker 2: The school kids.
Speaker 8: Were sort of asked what they thought they needed in
Speaker 8: the town to make it a good town to live
Speaker 8: in or you know, make it right up with everyone else.
Speaker 8: And one of the parents bought it to this Shire
Speaker 8: council of which I was a member at the time,
Speaker 8: and we thought, well that's a good idea. So half
Speaker 8: my own bat I did three trips east to see
Speaker 8: if we could find one secondhand, because I knew some
Speaker 8: over there were being pulled down.
Speaker 3: Where did you find it?
Speaker 8: Well, that one came from Budroam. It was a tan
Speaker 8: of our water slide originally right and a church group
Speaker 8: I believe had bought the site to have a church
Speaker 8: to run and still run the church in the buildings,
Speaker 8: but they didn't want to slide there and.
Speaker 3: So you arranged for it to be bought and are
Speaker 3: transported to Corlan. I did all that, yep, And I
Speaker 3: don't want to be vulgar. But how much roughly was
Speaker 3: the water? How much is it? Because it's quite a
Speaker 3: big water slide, isn't it looking at the photos?
Speaker 8: Oh? Yes, eighteen menace tall, spiral Wow spiral water slide
Speaker 8: and Menace tall.
Speaker 3: How much was that how much would that set me back?
Speaker 8: Well, well, really we only paid twenty five grand for it. Wow,
Speaker 8: you can buy a lot of things when they need
Speaker 8: pulling down and shifting.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I organized some trailers and trucks and some volunteers to
Speaker 8: go over there. So we went over there, took us
Speaker 8: about three days to get there, three and a half
Speaker 8: days to get there or something straight in a motel
Speaker 8: only about five hundred meters from the slide itself. Arrange
Speaker 8: for a demolition mob to pull it down, and we
Speaker 8: loaded it straight on the trucks there and.
Speaker 2: Then do you remember how many trucks.
Speaker 8: Four truck loads there? And then there was another trial
Speaker 8: and went over later.
Speaker 3: And then how long did it take to set up?
Speaker 8: Well, for a start, it needed refurbishing, as you can imagine,
Speaker 8: twenty five year old, fool, twenty year old slide. So
Speaker 8: the shire called tenders for that, and the best tender
Speaker 8: came in a two point two million. That automatically meant
Speaker 8: where we're going to throw it in the bin. I
Speaker 8: was involved with a little company over there at the time,
Speaker 8: and I sat down with my partner and said, Rob,
Speaker 8: what do you reckon? We could do this for so
Speaker 8: we sat down and we worked it all out and
Speaker 8: we looked at how much repair work had to be
Speaker 8: done on the steel work, get it sand blasted, get
Speaker 8: it painted, and get it erected. So we came up
Speaker 8: and reckon we could do it. Basically it costs for
Speaker 8: the count to the shire for about three hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 8: which is what we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we
Speaker 8: said it that made it economical. We sad blasted it professionally.
Speaker 8: We've got a professionally worlded up and professionally painted in
Speaker 8: two Pac paints so Primer and services.
Speaker 2: And it was all there. There was nothing missing.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, no, And that's why I bought that one.
Speaker 8: The previous two I'd looked at one in New South
Speaker 8: Wales in one in Queensland had all been dismantled. So
Speaker 8: we didn't have any we didn't have any paperwork. We
Speaker 8: didn't know how much was there and how much wasn't there.
Speaker 8: That's what appealed to me about this one.
Speaker 3: Are you there for the opening?
Speaker 8: Ah, A lot of the people were really excited. There's
Speaker 8: a few negative which you're always going to get. Yeah, Coerland,
Speaker 8: there was a little town. There's only about Frandred people
Speaker 8: live in the town. Wow, but it's a shire over
Speaker 8: one hundred and twenty kilometers long and there's about nine
Speaker 8: hundred in the shire. We're always going to get a
Speaker 8: bit of negativity because it's small and we're going to
Speaker 8: be spending money. But now, of course within it going
Speaker 8: in it's all accolades. Yeah, accolades.
Speaker 3: How did the water side change the amount of people
Speaker 3: coming into Colon?
Speaker 8: Then the first few weeks it was up, I saw
Speaker 8: a bus load came up from Collie. Now Collie is
Speaker 8: only sixty kilometers from Bumbry on the coast and two
Speaker 8: hundred cas to cooling. They made a special point to
Speaker 8: coming up there to use our slide on a couple
Speaker 8: of occasions. Meriden, which is on the main Great Eastern
Speaker 8: Highway heading east, is one hundred miles north. I've seen
Speaker 8: the same thing happen from there, and I've seen people
Speaker 8: come down from those places book into our caravan park
Speaker 8: and stay there for a weekend to use it to
Speaker 8: enjoy the water slide.
Speaker 2: What kind of water do you use?
Speaker 8: It is using scheme water cool and is on the
Speaker 8: scheme and we use ski water when it comes to
Speaker 8: our ovals we've got our own dam supply the water
Speaker 8: for that.
Speaker 3: So, John, are you now known in town as a
Speaker 3: bit of a legion because you bought the water slide
Speaker 3: to cool And surely you must get accolades when you
Speaker 3: walk down the street nowadays.
Speaker 8: Ago back in those days there was seven four and
Speaker 8: three agains.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Once it's gone up and I realize what it's done
Speaker 8: for the town and are still doing for the town.
Speaker 8: Those that were against it at the time were, well,
Speaker 8: I'm surely in favor of it now and almost try
Speaker 8: to say they were from day one. That you get
Speaker 8: you'll get bad with anything you do.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, John. Hey, thanks for talking to us.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 8: All right, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 3: What a shaker. Small towns and need people like that.
Speaker 4: Br under jump Bell water slide mate. And he's got
Speaker 4: to ring to it, hasn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Belle, you know what he brought up a
Speaker 3: very interesting point there. There's always negative people against it,
Speaker 3: and then eventually they'll try and claim that it was
Speaker 3: their idea. Yeah, because this is a thing you can
Speaker 3: suggest a water slider, man iSER, but then you've got
Speaker 3: to get through council.
Speaker 2: Brad.
Speaker 4: People don't realize that every single bit of infrastructure or
Speaker 4: play equipment or whatever that you see had to be
Speaker 4: approved by someone. Yes, and someone had to bring that up.
Speaker 4: If you try past a park and you see a
Speaker 4: swing and a slide, somebody had to approve that. Now,
Speaker 4: that puddle underneath the swing, that happened naturally.
Speaker 3: But also someone probably tried to approve it. Then someone
Speaker 3: was probably voting against them.
Speaker 2: There probably somebody's saying, I think we've got enough. I
Speaker 2: think we've got enough swings. One about the calm bitch
Speaker 2: and the potholes, and there was the eye.
Speaker 4: Watering costs he talked about, Yes, just the idea that
Speaker 4: that's a movie in itself. That's like a Bruce Willis
Speaker 4: movie of getting trucks and we're just going to drive
Speaker 4: over and just put it on shrucks. If he'd bought
Speaker 4: one of those disassembled ones, yes, they could have got
Speaker 4: back and found they bought a submarine.
Speaker 3: Yea piece is missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When he said how much they wanted, he said,
Speaker 2: there's three hundred people.
Speaker 3: Where are they going to get two point twenty million? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's after they bought the water slide. But they're
Speaker 3: just a refurbishment someone's trying to rip them off. Now
Speaker 3: we need more John Bows. Anyway, Look Mount Eyes at
Speaker 3: middle of Queensland a lot of money. There is money
Speaker 3: to be had from the government facilities for things like this.
Speaker 3: Let's cross the Kim Cogglin, she is the assistant mayor
Speaker 3: of Mount Isa.
Speaker 11: The mining industries all over Queensland give so much in
Speaker 11: royalties and not enough comes back into the region. So
Speaker 11: you could apply for two different sorts of funding and
Speaker 11: we applied. The big amount of funding we applied for
Speaker 11: was to put toilets and change rooms in all our
Speaker 11: sporting facilities, which was a great idea.
Speaker 3: Okay, cogo there. As we know, this is a thing
Speaker 3: about council. Okay. People want different things. People want different things,
Speaker 3: that's the way it goes. Some people wanted water slides,
Speaker 3: some people wanted toilet facilities for the sporting grounds.
Speaker 4: Money comes from services, money comes from rates rates. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but that's not where you're going to find all the money.
Speaker 3: You've got to get government money, like federal government, state government.
Speaker 4: And there's no more money kicking around than before an election.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so we don't know. But let's see.
Speaker 3: Daniel Slade was the mayor at the time, let's hear
Speaker 3: from it. She wanted to water slide.
Speaker 6: This was the resource money. So the Queensland government had
Speaker 6: gone to all the mines in Queensland and said, we
Speaker 6: want some money from you, and we're gonna put two
Speaker 6: hundred million dollars to mostly resource communities or communities that
Speaker 6: support resources for infrastructure. So I think one was like
Speaker 6: twenty million dollars major and one was one million dollars.
Speaker 6: So to pacify me, they said, you can have a
Speaker 6: water slide, but it has to be a million dollar
Speaker 6: water slide. And at the time this is round one.
Speaker 6: I was just thankful they agreed. So radio and of
Speaker 6: course round one was over and we got zilch zero.
Speaker 2: They got zilch nothing. They got not a thing, not
Speaker 2: even a swing.
Speaker 3: So they put in for the money from the government.
Speaker 3: They got not a swing, not a part, not a
Speaker 3: park bench. Throw them a bone, Queenslank government.
Speaker 2: What happened there?
Speaker 3: What happened? Well, let's let's continue on with the story.
Speaker 3: What else happened. Let's hear again from Daniel Slade.
Speaker 6: So I don't know if he's in the council meeting, but.
Speaker 3: The other council meeting I.
Speaker 6: Couldn't get the counselors to agree to move it into
Speaker 6: the twenty million slot where we could get a three
Speaker 6: or four million dollar water slide. They were stubborn on
Speaker 6: sticking to that one million dollar water slide. So in
Speaker 6: the end I vibed against everything, and I got a
Speaker 6: chance to talk to the Northwest the article I sort
Speaker 6: of talked about, you know, we should have been putting
Speaker 6: up a lot of projects, and there's no doubt in
Speaker 6: my mind that, you know, the project that the councilors
Speaker 6: wanted were toilets and showers for sporting communities.
Speaker 3: Should we hear a bit of the council meeting?
Speaker 2: I think we should.
Speaker 3: I mean, have you been a local council's?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, I haven't been at one.
Speaker 3: Surely no, I've never been a council meeting.
Speaker 2: I've never been.
Speaker 4: Normally, I'm straight to you know, the burning torches in
Speaker 4: the pitchforks and marching straight on state government.
Speaker 3: David, State government.
Speaker 2: You both pass the local local council meetings.
Speaker 3: Local councils, in my experience, attract all sorts of people
Speaker 3: with all sorts of agendas and all sorts of issues,
Speaker 3: and there's always fighting and arguing no matter where you
Speaker 3: are in Australia, let's cross the Daniel in the meeting, actually.
Speaker 6: Special meeting of Man as a city council. The time
Speaker 6: is now nine oh one. It was my idea for
Speaker 6: the water slide, but it's not big enough. And as
Speaker 6: much as I love the one in klon Curry and
Speaker 6: I get that you don't need a lifeguard, we should
Speaker 6: be going bigger and better. We should have what Townsfall has.
Speaker 6: We should have what the Big four has in Caravan
Speaker 6: Park has. We should have something that is fantastic. You know,
Speaker 6: we're a city of twenty thousand people and don't get
Speaker 6: me wrong, I'll be happy with whatever we get, but
Speaker 6: this should be bigger than better than what we're putting
Speaker 6: up there. And I think we're missing out on an
Speaker 6: opportunity here. And I just wanted to explain why I
Speaker 6: will be voting against this motion.
Speaker 9: Tut.
Speaker 3: That's a council meaning. So they put in for this money,
Speaker 3: they don't get the funding for the toilets.
Speaker 4: They don't get funding them toilets, which makes me think
Speaker 4: they have to go to klon Curry, go to the toilet.
Speaker 3: There's still dolets here. They need upgrading.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, no, that was they wanted all the
Speaker 4: sporting clubs to have upgraded toilets and showers.
Speaker 3: But the good news is bad. They get money for
Speaker 3: the water slide. But how much do they get I
Speaker 3: don't know. If they get one million dollars, which is
Speaker 3: not enough. That's only enough to build like a Klon
Speaker 3: curry water slide, or as doctor Evin would.
Speaker 2: Say, yes, one million dollars.
Speaker 3: It still makes me laugh. Anyway, a million dollars is
Speaker 3: only enough to build a small water slide, so.
Speaker 2: One that probably only goes halfway.
Speaker 3: Let's hear back from the council. It's his cargo.
Speaker 11: We missed out on the funding for the toilets and
Speaker 11: change rooms, but we got the money for the slide.
Speaker 6: It was it was hard, it was hard, and in
Speaker 6: the end I did get my way and council put
Speaker 6: our extra million dollars towards it.
Speaker 3: The council missed out on the toilet blocks, the toilet upgrade.
Speaker 3: They got them million dollars to the water slide, but
Speaker 3: then they chipped in another million dollars from the rates.
Speaker 3: Basically they can't counsel money. And I think eventually it
Speaker 3: was over a million dollars they had to put in
Speaker 3: because they decided that this they wanted a water slide,
Speaker 3: and they wanted it bigger than Kloncurry. They only got
Speaker 3: a million dollars from the government. They had to get
Speaker 3: another million dollars or so to build it. That's classic
Speaker 3: council stuff.
Speaker 4: Does beg the question when you're sitting next door to
Speaker 4: a billion dollar mine, where are you going to get
Speaker 4: a million dollars?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you think the mine were checking some kind of money.
Speaker 4: If only there was somewhere someone had some cash.
Speaker 3: But as we found out on this podcast, the relationship
Speaker 3: with the mine is not great. Okay, they've got the
Speaker 3: money for the water slide. Brad, how do you get
Speaker 3: the water slide? Do you do what John Bell did
Speaker 3: and find an old one and do it or do
Speaker 3: you build something brand new?
Speaker 4: I suspect John Bell got the last decent one.
Speaker 3: Yes. Do you go on Facebook marketplace and put it
Speaker 3: out there exactly?
Speaker 2: You know, just yeah, looking for a water slide and go.
Speaker 3: Well, we've already heard Andrew Potts from the Gold Coaster,
Speaker 3: you know, I've got his rabbit costume on Facebook marketplace.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's a significant difference.
Speaker 4: See and This is something else that happens with the
Speaker 4: innovation when you go all right, we've decided now we
Speaker 4: want to build a rocket that goes to Mars.
Speaker 2: Who's going to build a rocket?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, exactly. We have no expertise, no, and Facebook
Speaker 3: marketplace won't help you. Well, let's talk to Daniel from Simplex,
Speaker 3: they make water slide. He's got something to do with
Speaker 3: the Mount Isa water slide.
Speaker 12: Daniel labor On from a company called Swimplex. We build
Speaker 12: water slides and sort of do commercial filtration bits and places,
Speaker 12: commercial pools, anything aquatics.
Speaker 3: Really, how long have you been involving water slides and pools?
Speaker 12: The company started in the late eighties. I suppose we
Speaker 12: have to make our own water slides in Coffs Harbor,
Speaker 12: the town Robb spend most of my life and now
Speaker 12: we import them from Europe.
Speaker 3: As the demand for water slide it's increased because just
Speaker 3: doing this podcast, there seems to be a lot in Queensland.
Speaker 12: Now there are a lot of Queensland. Yeah, there seems
Speaker 12: to be a big push over the last probably ten
Speaker 12: fifteen years that they've sort of made a decent resurgence
Speaker 12: and yeah, you're seeing a lot of them in Queensland.
Speaker 12: Queensland's a bit tough with all the regulations you guys
Speaker 12: have got there but still seeming to push them through.
Speaker 3: And so what makes a good water slide.
Speaker 12: It's just a gradient, so it'd start to finish. You
Speaker 12: obviously want to you want a balance of a quick
Speaker 12: sort of bungee jumping experience if you're going down so
Speaker 12: quick with the kids and you're also on a family
Speaker 12: experience with the rafting slide or something where mum and
Speaker 12: dad can jump on with the kid. Or you want
Speaker 12: a entry level top, a meandering slide that comes down
Speaker 12: the hill all ower gradient. Normally we stick to like
Speaker 12: third four percent up till forty percent maybe for like
Speaker 12: a thrill ride.
Speaker 3: When counsels or whoever chooses a water slide, are they
Speaker 3: just like three or four to pick from on or
Speaker 3: do you design them for what they actually want?
Speaker 12: They're all custom designs, so yeah, we generally get a
Speaker 12: site plan and have some input from the council and
Speaker 12: a bit of a demographic for the area and figure
Speaker 12: out from their door sketch and it's designed overseas. They manufactured.
Speaker 12: We ratify with austrain engineers and then comes the problem
Speaker 12: job of installing it. It's way more fun riding them
Speaker 12: than actually installing in their absolute night meadow.
Speaker 3: Install Okay, you used to build them locally. Now they're
Speaker 3: built offshore. Where they're building.
Speaker 12: Them Istanbul in Turkey, Turkey. Yeah, Turkey's where a lot
Speaker 12: of the manufacturers sort of make fiberglass over there. Now
Speaker 12: it's a bit of a it's a good temperature most
Speaker 12: of the year around, a sort of cure fiberglass. The
Speaker 12: labor cost and other bits and pieces. Unfortunately, the way
Speaker 12: the world works.
Speaker 3: Wow, interesting stuff and being made in Turkey. I didn't
Speaker 3: know what it. Slights were made in Turkey, did you
Speaker 3: know that, Bradford?
Speaker 2: I did not know any I don't know what's made
Speaker 2: in Turkey.
Speaker 3: Turkey's bread, yeah, okay, right, the Turkey must have a
Speaker 3: huge amount of acting industry that we're not aware of exactly.
Speaker 3: You know what, though, if you're in the middle of
Speaker 3: Queens in fact, if you're anywhere around Australia and you're
Speaker 3: saying we're getting a water slide from Turkey, what are
Speaker 3: the locals going to say?
Speaker 2: Well, what's wrong with Australian water slides?
Speaker 3: Let's hear from cargo.
Speaker 11: Yep, it was made in Turkey, and we got a
Speaker 11: lot of flak off that too, like why don't you
Speaker 11: get someone in Australia to you know, why don't you
Speaker 11: get local rahra. Well, it's a specialized field like and
Speaker 11: that's just where the company get it from.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is exciting, Brad. We're at the end of
Speaker 3: episode two of our podcast. They ordered the water slide
Speaker 3: from Turkey.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of time.
Speaker 3: What could go wrong?
Speaker 2: What roll?
Speaker 3: This is a bit of a teaser for next week.
Speaker 3: This is when things really kick up. Forget about Andrew
Speaker 3: and his rabbit costume, John Bell and his water slide,
Speaker 3: and then they say, is ever listen to Mark Miller,
Speaker 3: who's the guy who is employed to get the water slide.
Speaker 13: From two there was a bit of an issue in
Speaker 13: the Suez Canal where one of the contenders got hold
Speaker 13: up and pirates seemed to take a bit of a
Speaker 13: lake into the slides and off off that went whooa.
Speaker 3: This is where the story gets international. Tune in next
Speaker 3: week for the pirates. The pirates have not the Caribbean
Speaker 3: Sews Canal.
Speaker 6: To me, it was like the dogs late my homework.
Speaker 6: You know, they haven't ordered it.
Speaker 11: So I didn't really believe Jack's parrot's the only pirate
Speaker 11: I'd like to beat.
Speaker 1: Slippery Slope, a true crime podcast about Male Isa and
Speaker 1: the missing water Slide.
Speaker 2: With Dave O'Neill and Brado's.
Speaker 3: Slippery Slope is written and hosted by Dave O'Neill and
Speaker 3: Brad Oak's original use it created by Itinerant Productions. Check
Speaker 3: out their website. There's some great stuff there. Ww dot
Speaker 3: Itinerant Production dot com. Editing by Courtney Carthy, published by
Speaker 3: Neely Media. Thank you to all the guests involved in
Speaker 3: the making of Slippery Slade, particularly the people of Mount
Speaker 3: Isa in this episode, Andrew Pots, Daniel Slade, Greg Campbell,
Speaker 3: Mayor of kroncarry Shire, John Bell and cooland Wa, Kim
Speaker 3: Coglan and Mark Miller, who will hear more from in
Speaker 3: the next episode. Find more information in the episode notes
Speaker 3: are at nearly dot com dot au.