Iconic surf shack bought for $48,000 during first-ever man-on-man surfing contest sells for $7 million!

Slice of history to be bulldozed to make way for "standout family home."

In 1920, a modest wooden house was built at number 10 Goodwin Terrace, Burleigh Heads, a joint typical of the period, elevated to snatch northerly breezes, a covered wrap-around balcony to shelter from the pretty damn relentless Gold Coast sun.

Six decades later, as man-on-man surfing was being debuted at the Stubbies Pro by Peter Drouyn, the house was sold for $48,936 and occupied thereafter, and for many years, by the winner of the 1980 Stubbies, Burleigh Heads local and the town’s postman, Peter Harris.

(Correction: An overnight email from John Lambert, the great-grandson of the man who built the house, reveals Stubbies winner Harris actually lived in the joint next door and that the house wasn’t sold in 1977, despite records suggesting otherwise, but was bequeathed to his dad from his great aunt that year. Lambert writes, “Because of our ongoing Burleigh connections & friends, this article hits all my family’s social media and its pretty insulting to read something so woefully researched and ludicrous in its sloppy facts. We have to deal with the fact its being knocked down and then also deal with your fiction! C’est la vie!”)

Now, a little after the hundredth anniversary of the house’s build, the iconic surf shack has traded for seven-million dollars, almost two-and-a-half mill more than it sold for in 2016.

The couple who bought the joint had been trying to buy it for the past three years. After the last refusal by the owner to sell, the pair bought a six-mill penthouse a little further down the street.

The agent that sold ‘em the penthouse then  convinced the owner of 10 Goodwin to sell ‘em the house, too, for seven mill.

A nice little pair of boltholes, although the historic house is gonna be bulldozed to make way for a “standout family home.”

Once one of the grittier parts of the Gold Coast, third in shittiness behind Coolangatta and perennial winner Palm Beach, has been transformed into a paradise for investors, including the Chinese man who bought the Old Burleigh Theatre Arcade, the former home of Surfing Life magazine, for eighteen-mill.