Carlyle Gardens Retirement Resort, Townsville buildings and social facilities. My notes are based on a brief visit in July 2008. We attended the weekend of Carlyle Gardens Retirement Resort open days organised at Townsville in September 2008. I have probably missed substantial facilities and social groups. Prime Trust also planned to build more facilities as Carlyle Gardens expansion continues.

Carlyle Square, at the main entrance off Beck Drive North, includes a number of specialist facilities spaces, including theatre, bar, restaurant and a number of rooms for social activities. Carlyle Square is an integrated quadrangle of buildings surrounding a village green. It is very pleasant looking. Offside from this are a bowling green and swimming pool.

Some other activities that were mentioned included line dancing, table tennis, theatre group, yoga. I am just not sure where Carlyle Gardens residents manage to hold some of these.

The Carlyle Gardens administrative and sales offices are located at the front entrance to the Carlyle Square buildings. There are large diagrams of the entire complex on the walls. There is also a large scale model of Carlyle Gardens Retirement Resort. We found the large model a excellent way to understand where everything was. There seemed to be an office for the resort manager, a receptionist, and several sales offices. We also noticed staff out in the resort included a project manager and some staff for the new construction, and several landscaping and gardening staff.

We noticed a box for organising collection of prescriptions medicines. It seems one of the local chemist shops collects prescriptions and delivers medicine to reception.

Beading, knitting, needlework, paper tolle, sewing, scrap booking were all mentioned in the Carlyle Chronicle newsletter that seems to be available to Carlyle Gardens retirement resort residents. The arts and crafts room is large and seemed well attended during the Open Day. Some of the hobby workshop folks seem to be involved in doing picture framing, in collaboration with the arts and crafts folks.

Crickets bar and lounge at Carlyle Gardens, between the Carlton Theatre and the Ball & Wicket restaurant, which is contiguous. Large doorway opens onto the Carlton Theatre. I think I saw snooker tables and comfortable chairs, as well as bar stools. Since the bar staff circulated during open day, offering drinks, I didn't really check out the bar.

There is a Carlyle Gardens Bowling Club area, somewhat larger than the swimming pool area. I believe they support indoor and outdoor bowls. The outdoor bowling green looked in good condition and appeared full size. There appear to be lights, for evening use. I have never bowled in my life (although I have seen Crackerjack), so I can't say much about this area.

The Carlton Theatre is a potential 700 seat area. It can screen movies, as we saw during the Carlyle Gardens open day when they screened their own advertising, starring various residents we later recognised. The Carlton Theatre has a large enough stage for a twenty piece military band. The large open audience area was used during the Carlyle Gardens open day, with a number of large round tables on the open floor. It opens on Cricket's bar and the Ball & Wicket restaurant.

There is a room set aside for the Carlyle Gardens computer club. It contained a handful of probably older desktop computers, that I suspect residents had donated. The computer club had a short article promoting the club, and offering tutorials on different topics. These articles were in each of the Carlyle Chronicles that we saw.

In addition, there is apparently a well informed computer enthusiast who visits and fixes (for a fee) resident's computers. Several people mentioned this person favourably, including the computer club president when we met him during the open day.

Very well equipped gymnasium at Carlyle Gardens, packed with a fine array of gym equipment. There is probably more equipment per square metre than most gyms I have seen. Looks like space for well over a dozen people to work on specialist gym equipment. I believe low impact exercises like Tai Chi are done in the Carlton Theatre.

There is a commercial hairdressing salon, Elizabeth's Hair Studio, catering to both men and women as part of Carlyle Square. Several of the residents had mentioned using it, and one of the chairs was occupied when we visited. Prices for haircuts seemed very similar to those we were used to elsewhere.

The Buttenshaw library at Carlyle Gardens Retirement Village is in a reasonable sized room. There seems a decent, but not overwhelming, number of bookcases. In a fleeting visit I didn't really check the books. However it looks like volunteer librarians like Phyllis organise the books, with a fair bias towards fiction. It looks like there is some co-operative arrangement with council library to make large print books available in one section. I gather there is also a specialist range of woodworking books, contributed by Frank, a member of the woodworking group. I also noticed a shelf or so of DVDs.

The Buttenshaw library also seems the location of the bridge players, several afternoons early in the week.

The library was named in memory of Norrie Buttenshaw, Mayor of Carlyle Gardens. I gather Norrie and Doreen were the first residents at Carlyle Gardens, in April 1997.

Ball & Wicket Restaurant at Carlyle Gardens Retirement Village serves lunch every day, I believe. It also serves dinners some evenings. There is also a breakfast some mornings. There is a opening schedule in the Carlyle Chronicle newsletter. The swimming pool is outside, and there are some outdoor tables. We have not tried a restaurant meal, but the small menu on the board seemed very acceptable, and the prices reasonable.

We tried the restaurant for lunch on a subsequent visit, and thought the meals were more than satisfactory.

There is a cenotaph at Carlyle Square. The RSL sub-branch organise ANZAC day and other activities, with support from the outside community. I should mention that Townsville has a large military presence, and the military is an important economic and social element in the area.

The Carlyle Gardens Social Club seem to have a monthly Sunday outdoor bowls event, and follow that with a barbecue. I gather there may also be movies at the Carlton Theatre.

The swimming pool is directly outside the restaurant, and includes a small barbecue area. Various people organise water aerobics and other exercises. I gather the pool now has heating and a pool blanket to extend the swimming season. The swimming pool has a handrail for entering the water via the steps. It also has a water level rail along one side for water exercises.

While we didn't see this Carlyle Gardens woodwork shop, we are assured by one of the enthusiastic users that it is well equipped. Several lathes were mentioned. There is also a variety of metal working machinery available.

When we remarked about not noticing any mail boxes outside homes, one of the Carlyle Gardens residents took Jean in an electric buggy to visit a typical mail box. Basically there seems to be a tiny sheltered collection of mail boxes in an attractive open structure along one of the walking paths about every two streets.

The house we wish to get is relatively close to a path and thus probably also close to its mail delivery box.

A medical centre has been constructed just inside the entrance to Carlyle Gardens retirement resort. I believe it will be operated by Dr Richard Jiang and his colleagues. This would be a fairly large building for a single doctor, so I suspect some other facilities may be offered eventually.

There are 66 serviced apartments being constructed in the area behind Carton Theatre and the restaurant. Carlyle Gardens Retirement Village , Townsville expect these to be completed sometime in 2009. Carlyle Gardens also have a development application with Townsville Regional Council for a 90 bed Aged Care facility in the new area to be developed in the future.

A public bus stops at the entrance to the Carlyle Gardens Retirement Resort, and continues to the major Willows shopping centre. The bus returning from Willows continues past the Carlyle Gardens resort to the hospital. See this Sunbus route map (in pdf) of Route 10 - from Willows to university/hospital via Carlyle Gardens and timetable. Buses generally leave for Willows shopping centre 10 minutes past the hour.

Willows shopping centre is part of the shared transport project. Once off $10 registration fee. Return costs from $10. Book through Willows by 4 p.m. Tuesday on 4799 9107. Willows Centre Management will arrange transport for either Thursday or Friday.

There is a mailbox for posting letters conveniently outside the entrance to Carlyle Gardens, Townsville. We were interested to note a similarly located mail box at Carlyle Gardens Mackay.

A shop is scheduled for the corner across the road from Carlyle Gardens entrance, according to planning maps of the area. As at September 2008 it was an empty block, opposite the ABC Learning Centre.

Carlyle Gardens Retirement Resort is 2.1 km from the Reading Cinemas, and 2.7 km from the Willows shopping centre. These figures are road distances from the odometer of our car. I suspect some minor shortcuts are available if walking.