The heartbroken family of Maroochydore’s last farmer has put all of a prime parcel of Sunshine Coast farmland up for sale as they navigate life after Peter Wise’s January passing.
The proud eighth-generation farmer had for decades rebuffed approaches from dozens of developers in the booming holiday hotspot.
When Mr Wise sold parcels of what was once a much larger farm in Maroochydore’s central business district, it was always on his terms.
He paved the way for building the congestion-busting Maroochy Boulevard and Harvey Norman’s kilometre-long Homemaker Centre.
Mr Wise’s fierce defence of his land from encroaching urban development made the site stretching between the Sunshine Motorway and Wises Road even more scarce and valuable.
All 39 hectares, just eight minutes’ drive to the beach at Alexandra Headland, has hit the market.
The site had prior approval in place to build up to 570 dwellings including retirement living, traditional homes on residential blocks, townhouses and apartments.
It included four hectares the 82-year-old had planned to keep to farm his beloved figs and re-establish his family’s historic Buderim Gold coffee plantation.
Lasting impact
July 4 would have been Mr Wise and his wife Ivy Wise’s 60th wedding anniversary.
She said she had found it too painful to return to the property where her husband was harvesting fresh figs for their farm shop until the day he went to hospital and later died after a short stay.
“I haven’t been brave enough to venture down there yet,” Mrs Wise wrote in a letter to customers on Wises Farm’s social media page.
“I find it very difficult to return to the fig farm as the memories are too sad.”
Their daughter, Amanda Hutchings, told ABC Rural she and her siblings had worked together to prune the fig trees, care for cattle and harvest coffee without the knowledge and experience of their father.
“We all have broken hearts, but we are all doing the best we can,” Ms Hutchings said.
“It takes all of us to do what one man did, he was definitely one of a kind.”
Unique site
Mr Wise’s friend and town planner, James Brownsworth, said the Wise family didn’t have the same skills and passion and knowledge to continue farming so had decided to sell the lot as a single portion.
“For the development of the site, that’s a very good thing, primarily because there were a few complexities, as you’d imagine, around maintaining an ongoing farming operation in the middle of what will be a development site,” Mr Brownsworth said.
Describing the land as unique, he said a period for public submissions would be advertised this week for a new development application before Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
Mr Brownsworth said the project would not exceed the previously approved development densities but was more up to date and laid out Mr Wise’s wish to include environmental corridors, public space, and a road link under the motorway to the Sunshine Cove subdivision on land he once owned.
The updated application was expected to take several months to pass through council.
No price has been put on the property, which will be sold by private tender.
Mr Brownsworth expected there would be no shortage of offers.
“He secured the [original] approval essentially to protect his family’s interests in the land, not necessarily with a view to developing it,” Mr Brownsworth said.
“He’d experienced incremental impacts, bits and pieces were taken for the Sunshine Motorway, Wises Road, water and sewer.”
Mr Wise’s British-born grandfather Frederick migrated to Australia chasing gold before buying the Palmyra at Buderim for £800 in 1901.
Their historic farmland between Wises Road and Orme Road on Buderim was set to remain in the family’s hands.
Peter Wise bought the Maroochydore property in the 1960s, originally growing watermelon, pumpkins, beans and tomatoes.
His farming dream was supported by his wife, who worked multiple jobs to keep the family afloat when a freak hailstorm destroyed a watermelon crop in the 1970s.
Development focus
Mr Brownsworth said Peter Wise was passionate about properly planning for growth on the Sunshine Coast.
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“Beyond farming and his family it was probably his primary passion and you should see the paperwork he left behind around documenting and recording this and the milestones that he was involved in,” he said.
“The primary focus that he and I had was to work out what the development footprint looked like on his land, versus the bits that weren’t to be developed.”
Mr Brownsworth said they had nominated key items including roads, open space and green linkages.
Mr Wise once ran a pick-your-own-fruit agritourism attraction on land where the Maroochy Boulevard and Harvey Norman’s Homemaker Centre were built.
Mr Brownsworth said Mr Wise had influenced much of the development of Maroochydore’s CBD.
“Maroochy Boulevard absolutely, but earlier than that, Sunshine Plaza before it was Sunshine Plaza, road network planning, open space planning, defending his land from the unwanted impacts of urban development so he could continue to farm it,” he said.
“It was his absolute passion and his heart was always in the right place.”
The Wise family have planned to sell figs from their farm shop later this year but the tradition would end with the sale of the land.
“The figs were Peter’s hobby and passion and without his expertise, sadly the sale of Wises Farm figs will have to come to an end,” his family said in a statement.
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