Gold Coast

Surfer’s Paradise and Gold Coast City on the southern shores of Queensland

Around Brisbane, as I am led to believe, there is *puts on best Aussie accent* the “Sunny” and the “Goldie”. Both highly touristy, and for good reason, with the miles of golden beaches and burning sunshine year-round. Gold Coast City contains the world famous Surfers’ Paradise, the start of Queensland.

We hit the Goldie for a few nights in 2008, staying at the Gold Coast International Hotel, right in Surfers’ Paradise and mere minutes from the beach. One of the highlights was the “Wet ‘n’ Wild” water park, and we also found the time to get some jet skiing in too.

Surfers’ Paradise beach, replete with development, including the world’s tallest residential building (at the time, later exceeded by Dubai), Q1 Gold Coast. This was the furthest east I’d ever been up to that point, and it reminded me a bit of Miami.

Our hotel, the Gold Coast International. Having booked one of the cheapest rooms we weren’t very high up the building, but by this stage I was finally breaking out of my student hostel way of thinking at last. It has since been rebranded as QT Gold Coast.

Cavill Avenue, Surfer’s Paradise, looking away from the beach behind me. This is one of several commercial centres around the city, and in late March as you can see the weather wasn’t reliably sunny! I didn’t actually try any surfing, following my lack of success in Brazil in 2005, and it wasn’t until 2016 in Costa Rica that I had another go.

Gold Coast city is very popular with Aussie retirees, with the warm weather, shopping and facilities. Here a couple of old geezers pass time at the chess board.

The city has been heavily developed in recent years, although many of these flats are used just as holiday homes.

Looking down Gold Coast Highway / Ferny Avenue with more high density development by our hotel.

Inside one of the plethora of shopping malls – everything was dead cheap and there was some excellent steak to be had! At the time of re-writing this page in 2023, I still have (and use) the Brazilian Havaianas sandals I bought here.

Wet ‘n’ Wild water park! I hadn’t been to a place like this in years – it was great fun.