The NSW coastal town of Kiama is known for its eponymous blowhole and idyllic beaches, but there’s a new-ish attraction that’s entrancing visitors from far and wide. Say hello to Granties Maze, a boutique backyard amusement park and a symbol of a showdown between a local council and a little guy fighting to achieve a pretty big dream.

There’s a big old hedge maze, an 18-hole mini golf course, “Moonwalkers” (kind of like these epic Gyrospheres from Jurassic World), and a whole bunch of trampolines, because trampolines! After you’ve played a few rounds of giant chess and won some Go Kart races, you might start to wonder – who is the absolute legend who set all this up?

An Ordinary Guy With An Extraordinary Dream

Enter John Grant, founder of Granties Maze, and perhaps the best bloke Australia has seen since Darryl Kerrigan from The Castle.

Like Kerrigan, ‘Grantie’ is the truest of blue, a hard worker who’s fought like a bulldog to bring his theme park dream to life since the ‘80s – an ordinary guy with extraordinary aspirations.

“I was a real estate agent, working six and a half days a week with only one day off a fortnight,” he says. “I had 5 kids, and I made it my duty to take them out every second Sunday. After taking them to the local zoo and all the other attractions around, there wasn’t much left to do, so I thought it’d be a great idea to set up a maze like the kind I saw in England when my father took me there as a teenager.”

“I didn’t know then it would take 34 years to get up and running.”

After a long struggle with Kiama Council and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, Granties Maze officially opened to the public on December 2015, more than 30 years after it was first cooked up in Grantie’s brain.

“They’ve got all the power, but I keep chipping away at them,” Grant says of Kiama Council. “It’s never going to be a Dream World or a Sea World or a Wet-n-Wild, it’s always going to be a small park with small-medium sized attractions. I can’t ever foresee ever being able to afford $25 million for a big roller coaster. I’m not a huge company – it’s my wife, my middle son and me. I can’t understand why the council is so against it.”

David Vs Goliath In Rural NSW

In a true rural NSW David vs Goliath moment, Grant ran up against the council at every stage of development, with each approval being granted only on the condition that hundreds of mandatory requirements were met – some of which have cost Grant thousands of dollars. During the battle to build his maze, Grant has been forced to fund construction of an overtaking lane before the turn-off to the amusement park, and made to build a “home-based” industry on top of the amusement park itself.

Grant had the idea of building a garden wedding centre – somewhere for people to get hitched conveniently and inexpensively. It took 2 years for the wedding centre to be approved by council.

Red tape and bureaucracy aside, Grantie has never given up. “My motto is persistence beats resistance,” he says. “I’m a stubborn old bastard – that’s coming from my wife.” Darryl Kerrigan would be proud.

While he’s not totally out of the woods just yet (he’s still working on meeting all those conditions), the park opening stands as testament to Grantie’s tenacity in the face of immense pressure from the big guys, the Goliaths in the council.

It’s Going Straight To The Pool Room

To his visitors, though, John is all smiles. “It was a relief to finally get approval and open up shop. When I get people who come back two, three, four times and notice all the hard work that goes into it, it makes me feel really proud,” he says. “I probably haven’t made this for myself because I will never see the benefits in my lifetime, but my kids will and they’ll have a job because of it. Even my grandkids will have jobs, and that’s the most important thing.”

Sure, jobs are important, but so are the 8-feet-tall Transformer models Grant has just acquired for his kid (and kidult) visitors. “The kids sit in these things and fire lasers at each other,” he says. “They go absolutely ballistic.”

Council fracas aside, it’s things like this that keep Grant going. “I love what I’m doing,” he says. “I love seeing the kids getting a kick out of the rides. We have people constantly coming back, and that gives me a greater thrill. We haven’t broken even yet after being open for two years, but it’s okay. Except my wife complains it’s my mistress – I spend more money on rides than I do on her!”

You keep doing you, Grantie. Granties Maze is going STRAIGHT to the pool room.

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