Coronavirus Gold Coast: Beach lovers furious over police and council COVID-19 crackdown
Gold Coast residents being banished from the beach by a council-led crackdown have slammed the decision, saying it was a bad look.
Gold Coast
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A SOUTHERN Gold Coast couple who “live for the beach” say council’s decision to clamp down on social gathering will be “bad” for locals.
Bilinga resident Anna Hammond was on Coolangatta Beach yesterday morning while her boyfriend Max Whittaker was in the surf when police approached her and asked her to move on, just hours after the council announced it would close three beaches.
“I am not happy about this at all, I live for the beach,” she said. “I was sitting on the beach at Greenmount when a police buggy drove up and told me to either swim or get off the beach.
“I guess it has to happen to stop the spread of the virus but it’s not good especially now during the school holidays.
“It is going to make things tough for a while.”
Police yesterday afternoon stepped up beach patrols aimed at halting the spread of coronavirus, threatening a four-strong group of German students playing volleyball with $1300 fines in Surfers Paradise.
But the students told the Bulletin the rules were “confusing”, three of them lived together so they were part of the same “bubble” and that beach volleyball should be OK. They also felt the Australian response overall particularly shutting borders had been “too slow”.
Two police approached the group of Griffith University exchange students who had been sunbaking together before their volleyball started on the southern stretch of Surfers Paradise Beach.
One officer told them they were only allowed to be in pairs maximum and lucky not to get a $1300 fine each. They were told to consider themselves warned and to leave the beach immediately.
The stretch of beach where they were was outside the area which will be off limits in central Surfers Paradise from midnight tonight.
One of the students, who declined to be named but noted they had been living on the Gold Coast since February, said he understood that by sunbaking in a group on the sand they had breached the rules.
“We had been laying in a group. I understand it. But what I don’t 100 per cent understand is that we are allowed to exercise but not allowed to play beach volleyball. Three of us are living together here in Surfers Paradise,” he said.
The group said they had all opted to remain on the Gold Coast throughout the pandemic partly because of the nicer weather and tighter restrictions back home in Germany.
Asked what they thought of the Australian response to coronavirus so far, one said: “Too slow. They should have shut down the borders way earlier.”
“We decided ourselves to stop going to parties or going out six or seven weeks ago. We have just kept to our group of best friends,” one of the students said.
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