Sunshine Coast castle sale a ‘unique opportunity’

The Sunshine Castle, a piece of ‘royal’ real estate and a key visitor attraction and events venue on the Sunshine Coast, is for sale.

Located centrally on the Sunshine Coast in Bli Bli, the Sunshine Castle, Australia's only Norman style castle, has been a landmark attraction in the region since its creation in 1972. 

Located just an hour and a half north of Brisbane, 20 minutes before Noosa and only 10 minutes from Maroochydore, the attraction was originally built by a Scotsman to exhibit a collection of fairytales and dolls.

Today it is a multi-award winning tourist attraction and function venue incorporating a fully licensed Cafe and a themed toy and gift shop. 

It also features a variety of exhibitions and displays, and a treasure hunt for children complementing a self-walk tour through the Castle. It is regularly booked with weddings, parties as well as private and corporate functions and successfully runs medieval feasting theatre dinners 'for a flogging good time'.

Collectively, the Castle offers visitors a combination of experiences that no potential competitor can make available.

Unique in form and execution the Castle may suit an international purchaser with immigration in mind, a savvy investor with a vision, or a local with a love for this extraordinary icon.

This is a rare opportunity to secure an established business, a unique building and prime property within the tourism industry in Queensland that ticks all the boxes for a successful future in Australia and a kingdom to call your own.

The sales also includes two properties on each side of the Castle, with a a Street frontage of 216.4 metres and a total area of 8,242 metre2 . In the 2013 Draft Sunshine Coast Planning Scheme it is considered that the two adjacent properties can be included in the tourism area zone.

The Sunshine Castle has been run by its current owners and their company S&B Uhrig Pty Ltd since July 2006 and owned by the Benecke family since 2002.

The decision to sell this family run business including the freehold has not been made suddenly and joint Managing Directors Birte Benecke-Uhrig and Stephan Uhrig in cooperation with owner Bernd Benecke (alias King Bernadus) are happy to have achieved the goals and business targets that they had set going into this venture.

As Birte Benecke-Uhrig explains “the Sunshine Castle has been a very rewarding and exciting time for our family.

“It is not every day that you get to live and work in a Castle – especially in such a beautiful setting as the Sunshine Coast.

“Who else can say that they have been the King and Queen of their own Castle? We will be telling our grand children about this one-day for sure.”.

King Bernadus who had the vision to buy the Castle 12 years ago and masterminded many of its renovations, additions and improvements, adds “we are convinced the Castle is a great opportunity for a buyer – and the potential is still endless.

“For us however there are some new priorities and projects in the pipeline which we would like to explore further, we will be a little sad when we sell but it will be exciting to see what’s around the corner.”

The family also assures their customers that it will be business as usual from now until the sale and that nobody will be disappointed in any way.

As Stephan Uhrig concludes “we are selling, but we have time and would even consider continuing our input past a handover to ensure a smooth transition – so would our wonderful staff.

“The Castle is a very unusual piece of architecture to sell, we are happy to wait for the right buyer for as long as it takes, us and our team will continue to strive for excellence in the mean time.”

The Sunshine Castle’s current business trading hours are from: 9:30am to 4:30pm – seven days a week.

For functions, the Sunshine Castle’s Liquor Licensing trading hours, are:

10am to 10 pm Sunday to Thursday
10am to midnight Friday & Saturday.

The Benecke family has chosen Colliers International to assist with the sale – their team being highly experienced in selling commercial and tourism properties.

For enquiries please contact Nick Dowling – Colliers International, on 0419 726 705, Tel: 07 5478 3788, E: nick.dowling@colliers.com

Click here for more information on the sale.

Click here to view the Sunshine Castle website.

8th October 2012 - OPERA RETURNS TO SUNSHINE CASTLE

19th May 2011 - OPERA COMES TO SUNSHINE CASTLE