Flashback: Look back at the Broadbeach monorail’s 27 years as it goes into city’s history

BOB Hawke was Prime Minister, Phil Collins topped the charts with No Jacket Required and the Gold Coast went monorail mad as plans were made for a Broadbeach system.

BOB Hawke was Prime Minister, Phil Collins topped the charts with No Jacket Required and the Gold Coast went monorail mad.

The year was 1985 and both city leaders and developers settled on futurist single-rail public transport as the method of moving people en-masse across the Gold Coast.

Developer F.A Pidgeon bought the Lennons Hotel at Broadbeach for $23 million with plans to demolish it and build a high-end $120 million complex.

The Oasis monorail in the mid-1990s.

HOW THE GOLD COAST WAVED GOODBYE TO THE MONORAIL

The complex was envisioned to have its own monorail link which was to run from Jupiters Casino to Pacific Fair and Pidgeon called in US-based experts Management Resources, who designed Disneyland’s monorail system, to consult on the project.

Reports at the time suggested “people-mover” could annually carry 1 million people on the 20-minute round trip between the three locations.

The Broadbeach to Jupiters Casino Monorail in recent years. Photo: David Clark

Simultaneously, the Gold Coast City Council and Bjelke-Petersen State Government mulled over plans to build a monorail system between The Spit and Broadbeach.

Transport Minister Don Lane launched a two-month feasibility study to consider the system, which would have taken a form similar to Germany’s H-Bahn monorail system.

AUGUST, 1989: The Oasis Skylink monorail makes its way across Gold Coast Highway to Jupiters Casino for the first time.

Then-mayor Denis Pie said he was “very interested” in seeing the monorail, provided the rights of ratepayers were not taken away while the Surfers Paradise Chamber of Commerce feared the $186 million system would turn the city into “perver’s paradise’”.

Gold Coast Mayor Denis Pie was “very interested” in the city monorail system and his council approved the Oasis project.

As the state and council grappled with the large-scale system, the demolition of the Lennons Hotel began in July 1987 and a Pacific Fair station was scrapped.

Two years later, the “Oasis Skylink” monorail opened on August 27, 1989 with 40 VIP passengers aboard for its first journey before it opened the following day.

June 1998: Firefighters tested their $1.2 million telescopic ladder with the Broadbeach Monorail.

The monorail proved to be a big hit with shoppers and tourists through the early 1990s but Oasis’ managers and the courts were frustrated by the number of people who jumped onto the tracks and tried to walk to the casino.

The citywide monorail system was scrapped in the early 1990s by the Goss Government.

By 2001, the push was on the extend the monorail, with then-councillor Eddy Sarroff lobbying for connections to the new Gold Coast Convention Centre and Pacific Fair.

The monorail in action near Conrad Jupiters Casino in the 1990s.

The centre’s owner, Thakral Holdings spent the early 2000s in talks with Pacific Fair owner AMP about the viability of an extension but this proved impossible.

By 2014 the monorail had broken down and fears grew for its future after an extended period offline.

It was announced in 2016 that it would close, with the final journey coming more than 27 years after the first.