Back to the picturesque place their cherished “Cammy boy” loved. The place where he tragically died last September in an alleged “coward punch” attack. The place where they held a candlelight vigil for him, where hundreds of family, friends and strangers came together to mourn his awful, senseless loss. The place where, as the inscription on the heart-shaped gold medallion around his father’s neck reads, Cameron Duce will be “forever 22”.

We’re sitting at a surfboard-shaped timber table beneath towering Norfolk pines on Burleigh headland, tears tumbling between smiles and laughs as Chris and Sonia remember their beautiful only son, the fresh-faced kid with the tousled brown hair and big, warm smile.

It’s one of the Gold Coast’s (and indeed Queensland’s) most iconic spots, this gently sloping grassy hill dotted with pine and pandanus trees, set against a backdrop of ancient volcanic boulders, rolling surf and the famous Surfers Paradise skyline shimmering in the distance.

Walkers and joggers are braving the still, hot early afternoon sun on the footpath that leads up and around the headland to Burleigh Head National Park as surfers jostle for waves at the world-famous surf break in front of us, and the Friday lunch crowd makes merry at the Burleigh Pavilion, its vivid white exterior contrasting starkly with the blue sky and ocean.

This was Cam’s happy place. The place where his parents asked to meet for the interview, so they could talk about their boy in his special spot.

“He came here multiple times a week,” Sonia says, her eyes welling up.

“He’d ride his bike here or go home (to Nerang) after work, pick up the dog and come here for a run. He’d come here for breakfast at one of the cafes, go out to dinner at the local restaurants and out to the nightspots with his mates on Friday and Saturday nights.”

Chris says: “He just loved the whole vibe of Burleigh - the beach and the headland. I would say that Burleigh probably reflected Cam in a lot of ways, or Cam reflected Burleigh – you know, laid-back, relaxed, chill.”

On September 21 last year, Cameron Duce went for a Saturday night out in his beloved Burleigh and never came home.

In the early hours of the following morning, while walking on The Esplanade near First Ave at Burleigh, the apprentice floorlayer was allegedly brutally bashed and left with severe head injuries. Witnesses reported seeing a group of up to five men leave the scene.

Cam was taken by ambulance to Gold Coast University Hospital in a critical condition, his parents receiving the terrible news in a 3am phone call from police. They told them their son had been attacked “and it’s not good”.

They rushed to the hospital, where they spent the next week by his bedside. His sisters, Tayla and Brianna, were also there for the agonising vigil, along with other family members and many of Cam’s many mates. They held his hand, talked to him and played him his favourite tunes as he lay on life support in ICU.

“I mean, all we had was hope,” Chris recalls sadly.

Through sobs, Sonia adds: “They kept on saying he had age on his side. The doctors and nurses were hopeful. They were telling us ‘this is the start and it’s going to be a long journey’. And they kept on reiterating that; that he’s got age on his side and it’s going to be a long journey.”

For Cam, it was a journey too far.

On September 28, the family made the heartbreaking decision to let him go after doctors told them his injuries were too traumatic. Two days after he passed, police revealed they had arrested and charged 18-year-old Gold Coast man Austin Ballard with unlawful striking causing Cam’s death. Ballard was granted bail in Southport Magistrates Court, with his lawyers saying he would fight the charge in a case expected to drag on for years.

The day of the arrest, Cam’s parents and two sisters bravely fronted a police media conference where Chris thanked first responders and the hospital “heroes” who did their utmost to save the popular young man.

“Cameron was a loving, caring, considerate, funny young man,” he told journalists.

“A loved son, brother, uncle, grandson, nephew and cousin. He also had a very large group of close mates, friends and family who were all wishing for the best possible outcome for him.

“He did absolutely nothing to deserve this.”

In an equally courageous eulogy at Cam’s funeral last October, Chris told mourners how, in hospital, he had held his son’s hand “for the first time in 15 years maybe” and marvelled at the man he had become.

“I realised how tough his hands had become, because he’s a tradie now, a worker,” he said. “He’d become a man. And he’d become a good man that I was, and still am, more than ever so proud of. I couldn’t have asked for more from him, as a son, as a brother, as a friend to others.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world. Losing anyone’s hard. But losing your child’s beyond words. It’s beyond feelings, it’s surreal … it’s hard to accept and it’s hard to believe and it’s hard to come to terms with. But I have to accept it and move on, and we all have to accept it and move on. That’s what Cam would have wanted.”

Sonia also broke down as she told the packed service at the Allambe Memorial Chapel near their Nerang home how she had wanted to keep her son “wrapped in cotton wool … (but) he chose to live his life, and I’m so glad he lived his life well.”

“He had the best outlook, he was always optimistic,” she said.

“He was so much to so many, an all-round great bloke and a near-perfect son. He would always say ‘I’m your favourite child’ and I would reply ‘You’re my favourite son’. He would do anything for me and I believe for others too. There’ll be no more ‘Hi mother’ when we speak on the phone, no more ‘Have fun at work.’

“I’m stuck in this moment, Cammy, and I’m going to try to live life like you would want me to. I’m immensely proud of you, I wish you knew that whilst you were here. I love you, and I miss you deeply.”

Cam was born and raised on the Gold Coast, the middle sibling to sisters Tayla, 20, and Brianna, 29.

“He was born on March 20, the same day as Brianna, but six years apart,” Sonia says. “He came into the world in a hurry on his sister’s birthday. That was the day he was meant to be born.”

Cam, his parents say, was an easy kid to raise from the very start – happy, content, inquisitive, kind and caring.

“He was a bit naughty and cheeky as a youngster, the classroom joker at school, but he had a great teacher/mentor, Mr Doe, at Worongary primary school who taught him time and place,” Chris says.

“As he grew he became a bit of a confidant for other people because they knew he was trustworthy and of good strong character. Cam used his big warm smile, funny jokes and general warmth and empathy to brighten up anyone’s day.”

Cam made lifelong friends at Worongary primary, and later Merrimac High. A kid his parents say “gave everything a go”, he played soccer with the Nerang Eagles, as well as rugby league for the Nerang Roosters and AFL with the Carrara Saints.

“He has a group of mates he went through primary school and high school with, and he was out with some of those boys the night this (tragedy) happened,” Chris says.

Cam worked at Officeworks with some of his friends while still at school before finding his path as a tradie. He also learned to play guitar and got some “really bad haircuts”, Chris remembers with a chuckle.

He and Sonia tell stories of Cam’s kindness and generosity, like the time Chris lost his water bottle and was admiring a big metal one Cam had for work.

“He told me he got it from Bunnings and I said ‘I’ll have to go there and get one’ but he said ‘No, I’ll get you one next time I’m there, Dad’,” Chris says, recounting a touching anecdote he shared at Cam’s funeral.

“About a week later, he turns up with this water bottle which he’d had specially engraved with a photo of one of the ships I served on in the navy. I use that as an example of the sort of kid he was. There was nothing in it for him, other than just doing something kind for someone.”

Sonia fondly remembers Cam buying one of his sisters some expensive perfume for her birthday. When Sonia remarked how it was also one of her favourite scents, “Cam went out and bought some for me too.”

Then there was the time Cam shrugged off a $150 Secret Santa limit and lavished his mum with about $600 worth of Christmas gifts. “He was generous and giving and thoughtful and caring,” she says.

“He went and watched Tayla get a nose piercing and fainted. Cam had empathy but he wasn’t soft. He was playing soccer one day and broke his collarbone, but continued to play. I had to tell the coach he was injured and to take him off.”

On what would be his last night out in Burleigh, Cam and his mates were stopped by police for a random street check. Not long after, one of the cops who did the check was the first on the scene of the alleged assault.

He spoke to Chris and Sonia the next day. “He said, ‘Yeah I remember your boy – he was very polite, very amicable.’ Cam called the officer ‘sergeant’ and made a very positive impression,” Chris says. Minutes later, Cam was lifeless on the ground.

“The sergeant told us he said ‘Oh, not this kid’,” Sonia says, her voice breaking.

Chris: “And that was sort of how Cam was – that he could meet someone like that police officer and leave that impression. We had the vigil here (at Burleigh) for him and we had about 350 people turn up, based on the number of candles we gave out. And I was walking around trying to thank people for coming and I was saying, ‘Oh look, how do you know Cam? And they say, ‘Oh, we just met him.’ He’d made this impression on so many people he literally just met in passing, and they came to the vigil.”

Chris and Sonia have arrived at Burleigh for the interview in a Mercedes camper van bearing the personalised plates “Cam Van”.

It was a project father and son were working on right up until the day Cam died, Chris and Sonia having bought an old tradie van to convert into a camper so they could drive Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.

“It was full of dust and all that, so we cleaned it all out and stripped it back to the bones,” Chris recalls.

“Cam was excited about it. He didn’t say too much to us but his mates told us he was frothing about it – you know, ‘We’ve got a camper and Dad and I are doing it up and we’re going to go camping.’” Cam and Chris were working on the van together in the hours before that fateful night in Burleigh.

“We were putting up a tongue and groove ceiling and he’s down one end and I’m down the other and I’m saying ‘Hey mate, you’ve got to get it up, you’ve got to get this tongue and groove slotted,’” he says.

“And he just stops, looks at me and says ‘Dad, you know I do this for a living?’ And I realised in that moment, he’s not a boy anymore, he’s a man.”

Sonia says: “Cam was such a dedicated worker. He’s been at work all day but came home and helped Chris with the van.”

After helping install the ceiling, Cam showered and was heading out the door for his night on the town. Realising he’d forgotten his hat to hide the glue still in his hair, he went back inside to grab it.

“I said to him when he came back out, ‘Mate, you couldn’t possibly go out on a Saturday night without your hat’ and he just gave me that ‘good one, Dad’ look. And that was the last conversation we had.

“Putting the ceiling in the van was the last thing we did together, so the van’s now got a lot of sentimental value to it. My sister and her husband and their family had the Cam Van plates made for us to add that special touch to it.”

Last December, after months spent largely housebound stricken with sorrow, the Duces drove the Cam Van down to Kiama on the NSW south coast to see a music festival featuring some of Cam’s favourite bands – mainly Aussie acts including Ocean Alley, Lime Cordiale, The Terrys, the Old Mervs and the Hilltop Hoods.

They’d gotten a deep insight into his musical tastes as they sat by his bedside in hospital during those harrowing days.

“We’d sort of been there 24/7 and after a few days and nights, one of the nurses in ICU just said ‘Well, why don’t you play some of his music for him?’” Chris recalls.

“We didn’t really know what he liked so we opened up his phone and just started playing the music on his Spotify list. We just had the music going the whole time as people came in and out, and we were going ‘these are really cool tunes, this is good’.

“We didn’t know some of the bands and the songs so we wrote them down. And then when he passed, we thought well, we’ll play some of this music at his service. Sonia chose one of The Terrys’ songs, Hopscotch, as her tribute song; I chose Home from (nephew) Callum’s band Dream Frankie Dream, Tayla chose Ocean Alley’s cover of Baby Come Back and Brianna picked Coldplay’s Yellow.”

When Brianna later learned that many of the acts on Cam’s playlist were performing at Kiama’s Changing Tides festival, 11 family members and friends decided to make the 10-hour road trip down there for a poignant tribute to their son, brother, cousin and mate.

“We were just like ‘this is meant to be’ and we all got tickets,” Chris says.

The pain of losing their son is still palpably raw.

But like other Queensland parents who have lost children to unspeakable violence – think Bruce and Denise Morcombe (Daniel), Paul and Kay Stanley (Matt) and Brett and Belinda Beasley (Jack) – Chris and Sonia have channelled their grief into fighting for a safer community.

They’re establishing the Cammy Duce Forever 22 Association, an initial step towards a foundation, and lobbied local and state politicians hard to improve public safety in Burleigh, which in recent years has emerged as a new night-life hotspot and developed a growing reputation for after-dark violence and anti-social behaviour.

More CCTV cameras have been pledged for Burleigh as part of the light-rail expansion, and a police beat has been promised by the Crisafulli government.

But the Duces are pushing for more, including a “safe zone” in Burleigh where revellers can gather to chill out and wait for an Uber or bus home.

The Gold Coast City Council this month offered to plant a tree with a plaque in memory of Cam. Chris and Sonia say while that’s a nice gesture, they’d much rather have a safe zone named in his honour.

“Burleigh’s the jewel in the crown of the Gold Coast and it’s unfortunately getting a little bit of a bad reputation at the moment with drunkenness and rowdiness and unsafe, maybe, at night,” Chris says.

“Burleigh’s got a beautiful ambience to it, so we don’t want to turn it into something it’s not, but we want to see it keep its reputation as a beautiful place for families and people to go out and feel safe.”

This Saturday night, on the weekend Cam should have been celebrating his 23rd birthday, Cam’s family, friends and members of the public will come together at Mo’s Desert Clubhouse at Burleigh for a Concert for Cam.

It’s being held to commemorate Cam – two of the bands will feature some of his best mates and his cousin Callum – and raise funds to help Chris and Sonia continue their campaign for improved public safety. They’ve even had special T-shirts printed to be sold on the night, emblazoned with a photo of Cam in the snowfields with his mates, clutching a beer with a mile-wide smile on his face.

“So that’s what we want now,” Chris says.

“I mean, Cammy’s gone now. We can’t change what’s happened so we can only look towards the future.

“We will always be looking back and we’ll never forget. But if we’re going to move forward with this, we need to do it positively. We need to be working towards improving situations. If it’ll help us, it’ll help his mates, it’ll help everyone, it’ll help the community … it’ll help Burleigh.”

Concert for Cam tickets are available at cammyduce.com