Club History

Tan's Taekwondo was established in July 1982 under the name "Queensland Academy of Martial Arts". The founder - Dr David Tan, opened our first centre at the CWA Hall in Southport.  Instructors Dr David Tan, Michael Tan and George Ruch slowly expanded to 5 centres being Labrador, Southport, Broadbeach, Miami and Tugun.

In 1988 we expanded to Brisbane with 3 clubs on the Southside - Marsden, Springwood and Rochedale.  To this day, master instructor Darryl Gowlett still teaches at Springwood. In 1990 Instructors Ray and Glenice Lovell joined our club after openning at the Logan City PCYC in 1978.  Today the centre is being taugh by Head Instructor Chrissie Bowie - 4th Dan.  From 1992 to 1998 we also had 3 centrees on the Sunshine Coast.  Instructor Martin Amos joined our club in 1992 with centres at Maleny, Landsborough and .

In 1994 Master Michael Tan opened the Buranda centre to cater for the students closer to the CBD.  Our first northside centre was started by Darren Connor at Wooloowin.  Darren would then move back to Adelaide and hand the centre over to Head Instructor Wayne Mahoney.  Darren has since start up a club in Wyndham, outback WA.

An old student Shane Buckley contact us to say he had moved to Roma and would like to start a centre.  In May 2000, the Roma centre was established as our first regional centre with instructors Shane Buckley and Stevie Ruru.  Stevie and our first black belt Daniel Keegan now run the centre at the Roma Recreational centre with a strong following.  

Tan's Tae kwon do has alway had a passion towards Olympic style competition. Our first national Gold Medallist was Kirsten Munster (1985 Female red belt Heavy Wt). Since then we have regularly had national champions. One of our greatest achievements was winning 9 Gold, 2 Silver, 3 Bronze out of 15 fighters at the 1991 Australian Championships, the most gold by any individual club that year.  Master Michael Tan first represented Australia at the 1989 World Championship in Seoul Korea.  Our first student to represent Australia was Sacha Ruch at the IOC Centenary in 1994. Sacha won a bronze medal in the men's fin weight division.  At the 1998 Australian selections, our club won 6 gold, 8 silver and 3 bronze medals, the most by any club in our state.

Over the years Tans has had the most students to represent Australia from Queensland. Byron Colebore from Currumbin has represented Australia at 3 World Championships and the 2001 World Cup. Has best performance was a silver medal at the 2008 US Open. Thomas Power represented Australia at the 2000 Junior Worlds in Korea. He has twice won an international gold medal having knocked out his Korean opponent in Malaysia in 2009. Ben Hartmann has been competing internationally since 2000.

Tan's Taekwon-do has 4 international referees - Darryl Gowlett (1st class), Michael Tan (2nd class), Shane Hartmann (3rd class) and more recently Carlos Lakerdis (3rd class).  Darryl Gowlett is one of the most senior international referee in Austrlia and has officiated in a number of international events such as the World Cup and the World Championships.  Instructors Wayne Mahoney and Sue Trewin have represented Queensland as officials in national events.While Master Michael Tan, and Shane Hartmann have participated as international referees. With such an active role in Taekwondo, you are ensured that our instructors are keeping pace with this ever evolving art.

Today Tan’s has over 1000 members including a number of affiliate clubs in their own right.