Big Brother house completely unrecognisable following cancellation: 'Really sad'

It’s been over 23 years since Big Brother first launched in Australia, with Network 10 building the original house on a compound located at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast. The location was used for 11 seasons from 2001 until 2014 when the show went on hiatus and was burned down and subsequently demolished in 2019 after being completely abandoned and vandalised for over five years.

While the house served as the setting for some of the most iconic moments in Australian reality TV history, from Sara-Marie Fedele’s bum dance and bunny ears to Layla Subritzky’s ‘Oats a la Layla’ earworm, satellite images from Google Maps show that it’s now nothing more than a water dam.

Benjamin Norris, who won Big Brother in 2012 after living in the house for almost three months, tells Yahoo Lifestyle he’s saddened to see the photos of where the landmark residence once stood.

“This actually makes me feel really sad. In the months that followed leaving the Big Brother house I would wake up and wonder what happened to my herb garden which I looked after for 87 days,” he shares.

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“It might seem silly to some but you did become attached to silly things like maintaining the garden. We all looked after the house like you would look after your own home. I felt a lot of shame because of my attachment to such silly little things and the routines I had created to survive mentally while being away from the real world.

“I would have loved for many more housemates to have been able to live in that house and have the experience I did. When I see the house underwater it tugs on the heartstrings and I know people would laugh at that.”

Cancelled plans

While Channel Seven renewed the series in 2020 and aired five seasons, with the three most recent seasons being filmed at a house in Sydney Olympic Park, the show has since been axed from the network’s 2024 line-up.

“Seven still owns the rights to the series, however, it would need more than a miracle to get the show back up and running,” an insider tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

“Seven knows the more recent formats don't work with the Survivor-style eliminations, and before the 2023 season completely bombed in the ratings there were talks of returning the show to air live and relocating the house back to Queensland.”

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An executive who worked at Endemol Shine Australia, the show’s production company, confirms that they were “looking for a new home in Brisbane along with an amphitheatre for live evictions”.

“Big Brother around the world will never go away and while in Australia it is no longer on our TV screens it will most likely come back at some point,” the insider shares. “In Canada, the UK and India, audiences are still celebrating the format and that is proof that in 2024 the original format still works.”

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