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corner LEAGUES CLUB JOURNAL
PROVAN STILL POWERING THROUGH LIFE
4 November 2003

Norm Provan

While gravity has pinched an inch or two from his "Sticks"- still 6' 4" with hands the size of dinner plates - unshrinking courtesy saw him collect your scribe from Maroochydore Airport recently for tour de Caloundra.

First stop was his latest building project - a 12-storey, 70-apartment block slap bang on the shores of the Maroochydore River.

There, Provan relives the camaraderie he once enjoyed when wiring Caltex's Kurnell Oil Refinery, while local "sparkies" clearly revel in the company of a man immortalised in bronze for rugby league glory.

"I think Norm is the type of bloke who never sought the limelight.

You have to know him to understand him - he is a great man," says former Football Club Secretary Glyn Price.

Legends Bar at the Oasis resortTo know Provan today you must understand his insatiable appetite for construction.

In 2003 the 71-year-old director of a development syndicate completed his own state-of-the-art home on Caloundra's canal system only to sell it and begin anew on a 50-acre property high up in the hinterland (where he tinkers around on his "toy" - a farm tractor).

Still charging through life - oh, and roundabouts - Provan looks as fit as a fiddle despite his claim he has let himself go recently.

'I used to jog along the river three times a week but I've got to get the [lung] capacity back up,' he told the Journal, driving by the numerous oceanfront properties developed by his Turbo group.

Norm ProvanAfter scaling down his famous electrical goods stores in the late 1970s, he purchased Moon River Caravan Park north of Cairns, where thousands of visitors were treated to his celebrity and commensurate sense of hospitality.

"It was a rather special place right on the water - once again prime real estate - and we sold it during the inflated prices up there when the Japanese were buying everything," he said.

The Provans then moved south from Kuranda to the Sunshine Coast in 1990 to build Caloundra's four-star OASIS resort.

It would never have gone ahead if not for Mrs Provan's nerve - and altruism - in the face of the 1989 pilot's strike and its subsequent threat to tourism.

"Lindy made the historic statement: "Let's give somebody some jobs", laughed Provan, noting that their 200-room resort is now going "great guns" after some tough years initially.

(The Journal can certainly recommend it).

"The original plan was for just two-storey villas to cover this whole area, but we went away from that to hotel rooms," he said.

Lunch in the tranquil surrounds of OASIS's Reflections Restaurant was followed by an inspection of Legends Bar, home to photographs of each of the 11-straight Premiership sides and the 1949 team that inspired Provan.

The GladiatorsAfter winning 10 Premierships, four as captain-coach, and playing 259 First Grade games and 14 Tests, he puts St George's amazing success down to one thing: good management.

"They were bringing in players when they were needed.

And they slotted them in well and never doubled up," he said, praising the recruitment smarts of Laurie Doust and co.

Provan talks a lot of good management in his new incarnation as a developer and holds some strong views on regional development.

But, when asked, he says never for one minute has he considered running for council.

"Well, I just want to criticise others nowadays,' he joked, in his best Walter Mathau.

His first taste of elected representation must have turned him off public life for good.

It came during World War Two when schoolmates at Crows Nest Secondary School secretly organised for him, then 14, to fight a bully who had returned from cadets training even more belligerent.

"The kids had organised for me to fight him after school in the laneway behind Gartrell White Bakeries and we punched each other up and down it," he recalled, reluctantly admitting to getting the upper hand.

Thus the chivalry captured in the famous The Gladiators photograph had always been with Provan.

And today the Club's indefatigable son remains an unassuming man of the people as he enjoys a very constructive life after football.


 



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