New Year’s Eve in Surfers Paradise, filled with confetti canons, money-braggers and a disappointing end: Surfers Paradise Bartender Diaries

I’m a bartender on the Surfers Paradise nightclub scene. Tonight I’m dealing with Mr ‘I’m paying for all this’ and Mr ‘I’m self-made, wealthy - come on my boat’. Read my latest diary

It’s nearing midnight and I’m on a VIP waitress shift, serving drinks to two groups of revellers who have shelled out for the night to book a booth. It includes drinks service from yours truly.

One occupant is bragging incessantly about his “self-made wealth”. Another booth booker wants it known he is the one who paid for the bottle of spirits they’re all drinking from.

“One of us had to be rich.”

Welcome to New Year’s Eve in the heart of the Gold Coast Glitter Strip. Yawn.

Like many of you, I was counting down the minutes to midnight - but for different reasons obviously.

It’s generally one of the biggest nights of the year but in Surfers Paradise, while festive, was a little quieter than I expected.

It will still take me the next few days to properly regain my hearing

But back to my booth patrons.

After a rather withering stare on my part, Mr “self-made wealth” began to describe in great and unfortunate detail, the boat and house he’d been able to buy by “the ripe age of 25”.

I had to listen to him ‘mansplain’ for about 20 minutes how to save enough money to buy a house.

By the end my sour expression prompted a bizarre interrogation into why I was so “stand-offish” and politely declined a dinner invitation on his boat in Cleveland.

Meanwhile, Mr “I’m paying for everything” felt it was important to explain to me that his mates didn't know he paid for this and that, yes, “one of us had to be rich”.

My countdown finally drew to a close and I experienced my first New Year’s in a club when the clock struck midnight.

I was given the thrilling job of setting off some of the confetti canons. It was more fun than I envisaged.

But I did spend the first half hour of 2024 pulling tiny pieces of sparkling confetti out of my hair, clothes and mouth.

3.30am in Surfers Paradise on Orchid Avenue on New Year's Eve 2023. Picture: Tahlia Leathart

After midnight, the club cleared out very quickly and to my great surprise, numbers looked to thin to about half the population of what it had been at midnight.

Only one thing stayed constant for my entire 10pm-5am shift: one man who had positioned himself on a podium and was performing the best, albeit most obnoxious, dance moves I had ever seen.

It was hard to concentrate on booth orders while I was trying with all my might to not burst out laughing as this let-and-live reveller body-rolled and shimmied along to Beyonce and Taylor Swift.

As far as first New Year’s Eve club experiences go, I think mine was pretty good. Definitely entertaining in a way.

But, I don’t think I can speak for everyone else in Surfers because - unlike most of you - I was sober.