THERE’S no city like the Gold Coast and there’s no newspaper like the Gold Coast Bulletin. Today we start a countdown of 130 oh-so-Gold Coast news moments.
130: FROM FARM KITCHEN TO SURFWEAR DYNASTY
SINCE 1973
NOTHING shows how popular beach culture has become than the Gold Coast-born company that sells it to the world.
Billabong was brought to life at a Springbrook Road farm in 1973 where company founders Gordon and Rena Merchant made board shorts on their kitchen table.
They sold their 20 pairs a week from the back of their car and at flea markets.
In 2007 Billabong was the country’s surf wear giant, with global sales of about $3 million a day in around 100 countries. Mr Merchant was one of the coast’s richest people, with his wealth estimated at around $830 million, but his wealth plunged when his company hit financial white water.
Mr Merchant also developed a charitable side. In 2005 he established the Merchant Charitable Foundation and a year later started a Cerebral Palsy Research Program at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Another favourite charity is ACT for Kids as well as the Protective Behaviours program.
129: GOES ALL L.A.
1942-1945
During World War II the Coast, as with the rest of Australia, was ‘invaded’ by US servicemen. All the resorts were open but there weren’t any luxury hotels or high rises around. The best was usually Jim Cavill’s Surfers Paradise Hotel, which served for a time as a convalescent depot. The Coast was home to combat troops, Australian and American, on leave and preparing to head back into the fray of the Pacific battlegrounds or for servicemen recuperating from being wounded or struck down by myriad maladies around the Pacific Islands, especially malaria.
While there were major army camps at Nerang, Mudgeeraba, Tamborine, Surfers Paradise and Nobby-Miami, rest and recuperation centres and leave camps were located at Fingal, throughout Coolangatta and Kirra, at Burleigh Heads, Tugun, Nobby Beach, Mermaid Beach and Surfers Paradise.
They even dubbed one spot Los Angeles Beach and that led to the formation of the Mermaid Beach Surf Life Saving Club, because many of the troops were poor swimmers and had to be saved regularly.
128: METER MAIDS — AN ENDURING VISION
APRIL 7, 1965-PRESENT DAY
Meter maids are as Gold Coast as sand and sun. On a trip to Florida in 1965 Bernie Elsey saw something that started his mind ticking over.
In Fort Lauderdale, pretty young ladies helped tourists out by feeding coins into parking meters.
Parking meters had hit the Coast the previous year and Elsey, and the local progress association, thought tourism might take a hit.
127: CANAL DREAMS
1957
For a time, no Gold Coast development would be complete with a canal. From Southport to Coolangatta, developers dug waterways into their suburbs to enable homeowners to live the waterfront dream.
In 1957 the first major canal development — Florida Gardens — was built by the Melbourne-based Savoy Corporation and was followed by similar ones at Miami Keys, Rio Vista, Moana Park and Rialto.
126: KEITH WILLIAMS & THE WHITE SHOE BRIGADE
1956 AND BEYOND
“I enjoy everything I do and I think this is the main thing in life, because you shouldn’t do things just for money.” Keith Williams was a telegram delivery boy in 1943 and went on to become one of the Coast’s most high-profile developers.
Mr Williams visited the Gold Coast as a child and stayed in a small shack near what would become the site of the Surfers Paradise Chevron Renaissance.
In 1956, he opened the Surfers Paradise Gardens professional waterski shows, which were held on the Nerang River. Less than a decade later, he organised and competed in the World Waterski Championships, held on the Broadwater.
Mr Williams eventually moved his ski show to The Spit and opened Sea World in 1971, before selling it in 1985.
Mr Williams, who lived out his life on the Coast died in 2011 aged 82 after suffering a series of strokes.
125: SHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP ...
One thing the Gold Coast is known for its shopping. The Coast’s great shopping centres can all be traced back to the Sundale Shopping Centre.
Sundale was built on the site of the Southport Hotel in 1968, and boasted a series of major shops, including a Big W, a Woolworths, a cinema and a central stage area for fashion parades.
Sundale was a popular spot through the 1970s and early 1980s. Pacific Fair opened in the late 1970s, soon followed by Scarborough Fair (renamed Australia Fair) with both putting pressure on the ageing Sundale centre.
It eventually closed in 1990, a year after being put on the market for $50 million.
124: BRIDGING THE GAP ...
1925 — PRESENT DAY
Before the Jubilee Bridge was built in 1925, ferries took people across the Nerang River from Southport to Main Beach, which already had a reputation as a surfing hotspot.
The Jubilee continued to service the area until 1966 when the Sundale Bridge, officially named the Gold Coast Bridge, was built.
Once it was it was finished, the Jubilee was torn down.
123: HI-LO GOLD COAST
DECEMBER 1959
It’s hard to believe that a 10-storey building in Surfers Paradise was once described as a ‘giant’ but by the time Kinkabool was finished in 1960, it was the Q1 of the city. Kinkabool had 34 units or flats, as well as two penthouse suites on the 10th floor and was the Coast’s first high-rise.
122: GOLDEN GIRL
2000 and 2002
Before Sally — there was Karla.
It seems strange that, as a six-year-old, one of Australia’s greatest iron women at first refused to enter the surf without her dad.
Southport-born Karla Gilbert showed promise when she won the first professional iron woman race she entered in 1990.
Gilbert was the World Iron woman champ in 200 and 2002 as will as taking our gold five times as the World Surf Lifesaving Champion. These days Gilbert is a proud mum and champion stand-up paddleboarder.
121: MARINELAND THE FIRST OF OUR ‘WORLDS’
1966
The Gold Coast is well known around the world for its thrill-inducing tourist attractions, but it was Marineland, at the Southport Spit, that set the benchmark for theme parks on the Coast.
In 1965, the Reichelt syndicate leased about 10 acres (4 ha) from the State Government to build a “Seaquarium’ at the Spit.
Construction started in March, 1965, with the park’s features including a porpoise pool, four minor pools and a grandstand.
Construction of the park took about 12 months before it opened in 1966. It operated as Marineland until bought by Keith Williams in 1976 who moved the operation to the present Sea World site. The park was later sold to Christopher Skase who, in 1986, demolished it.
120: JUST MAGIC
1962
In 1962, construction company Page Newman built a chairlift on a hill at Miami, and Magic Mountain was born.
The ride took patrons from the Gold Coast Highway to the top of the headland to appreciate views from Surfers Paradise to Coolangatta.
The chairlift proved a success with more than 40,000 people riding it during its first year of operation.
The attraction eventually became rundown. The chairlift remained an attraction at Magic Mountain through its lifetime and remained in-service until the park closed for good in 1991.
In 1995, the remains of the park, excluding the chairlift towers, were demolished to make way for a luxury resort. and its original owners sold it in February 1976 to Sydney resident George Carrett. He said the site took his interest while holidaying on the Coast with his family in 1975. The area was renamed Magic Mountain and became one of the Coast’s first amusement parks.
Mr Carrett sold the park in 1982 and it underwent a $13.6 million redevelopment to create a large theme park. The chairlift remained an attraction at Magic Mountain through its lifetime, being refurbished for a second time after Mr Carrett sold the property.
It remained in-service until the park closed for the first time in 1987 after more than 20 years.
The chairlift was dismantled in the early 1990s and only its support structures remain. It closed for good in 1991. In 1995, the remains of the park, excluding the chairlift towers, were demolished to make way for a luxury resort.
119: NEWSPAPER PIONEER ...
MARCH 28, 1885
Patrick Macnamara was the Coast’s first media magnate. He migrated from Limerick in Ireland and arrived with his family in 1885 when he was 37.
Macnamara’s father had been a newspaper proprietor in NSW and Patrick followed in his father’s footsteps printing a four-page weekly from a small shed in Lawson Street, Southport.
He founded The South Coast Bulletin on March 28, 1885 which would grow into The Gold Coast Bulletin.
118: SKASE THE PLAYBOY ...
Out on the Spit is a very public legacy to deceased businessman Christopher Skase. Skase was one of many Australian entrepreneurs who dominated business in the 1980s. His Qintex Corporation constructed the luxury Sheraton Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast, as well as one at Port Douglas in far north Queensland. He and his wife Pixie were regulars on the coast social scene.
But Qintex hit financial trouble and the company collapsed.
He was arrested and locked up overnight in the Southport jail. Skase fled to Majorca in Spain and claimed he was too ill to return to Australia. His personal debts were estimated at $172 million. He died in 2001, aged of 53.
117: RISE AND RISE OF RAPTIS
Former Prime Minister and master of invective Paul Keating once asked how often a souffle could rise.
Well, if developer Jim Raptis was behind it, it would rise often and more spectacularly each time.
When the credit crunch hit in 2008, the Raptis Group’s debt level proved fatal, and the company slid into administration.
But in September 2009, creditors threw the group a lifeline, voting to move the debt into a separate trust.
It was a great escape, but amazingly it was the second time Mr Raptis had eluded crippling bankruptcy in this manner. After the 1991 so-called ‘recession we had to have’, the Raptis Group was placed into administration only to negotiate a similar deed of arrangements.
More than almost any other developer, The Raptis Group was behind the modern transformation of Surfers Paradise into what it is today.
116: YEN FOR INVESTMENT ...
In the 1980s Surfers Paradise looked more like Beirut. Developers were snapping up properties and evicting tenants to minimise hassles when they started rebuilding. But the buildings deteriorated and were targeted by vandals, becoming eyesores.
This was the market that Japanese developers, flush with cash, walked into.
The stunned local landowners who were only too happy to offload sites at inflated prices.
When the property bubble burst in the 90s, many Japanese companies slunk away severely wounded.
115: A HUNCH MADE A HERO ...
Bernard O’Reilly’s single-handed effort to risk his life to save strangers who survived the Stinson plane crash in the Gold Coast’s mountainous hinterland will forever hold its place in the history books.
Acting on an instinct, he trekked through the densely forested Lamington Plateau of the McPherson Range where he stumbled across the only two survivors — John Proud and Joe Binstead.
He was labelled a hero, a tag he humbly denied to the end.
Mr O’Reilly set out in the early morning through thick rainforest and spent the night huddled up to a tree to ward off the cold.
The following morning, he saw a tree that looked as if it had been recently burned. After trekking several more hours he heard a ‘cooee’.
He ‘saw the wreckage’ and ‘smelled the dead men’ and found Mr Proud and Mr Binstead, still alive after their 10-day ordeal. Five other men died.
114: SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT.
It began as an excuse for Brisbane private school students to play up for a week at the end of 12 years of schooling, and evolved into a multifaceted festival attended by more than 50,000 teenagers. No one really knows when Schoolies kicked off.
We now have terms like Toolies and the whole event pumped more than $60 million into the Gold Coast economy.
113: UNITED IN TIMES OF CRISIS ...
Australia Day, 1974
No one could have imagined the devastation 1974’s Australia Day flood would cause on the Coast.
An estimated 2500 residents and holiday-makers were forced to flee from their homes, flats and caravans as the worst flood on record rampaged through the Gold Coast.
The flood came during rains of up to 40 inches and was bolstered by gale-force winds and peak tides.
112: SEALED WITH A KISS ...
What about the time when Peter Foster and his girlfriend ‘Jane’ (we won’t tell you her real name as she is now happily married) were lazing around the pool at the Golden Gate when a very excited media man, Fred Fraser, burst on the scene with an idea.
He was assigned to cover Prince Philip’s stroll on the beach, which he feared would be extremely dull.
Short of a quid and needing something to sell to the overseas media, Fraser said: “Your girlfriend Jane is a stunner. How would she like to be on the front page of every newspaper in the world tomorrow?”
Within an hour the six-foot-tall blonde beauty was strategically placed on Surfers Paradise beach dressed only in the tiniest of bikinis.
Minutes later an unsuspecting Prince Philip was strolling along the beach when Jane pounced and planted a big ‘welcome to Australia’ kiss on his cheek — much to the delight of the media.
Headlines were made the world over, especially when Prince Philip said to our beauty: “You’ve got the wrong one. You’re after my son, Charles.”
111: BURLEIGH OR BUST ...
The Gold Cost has a reputation for going a developer’s paradise, a place where deals get done and things get built. All of which makes Burleigh Heads National Park a remarkable place. Burleigh headland was set aside as a reserve for public purposes in 1886 and it managed to survive subdivision proposals in 1916 and 1929.
Burleigh Heads would have been a very different suburb today if a 1941 proposal to use the headland to grow bananas had been passed. In 1947, it became a national park.
110: DAVID FLEAY’S WILDLIFE PARK ...
1952 — Present Day
David Fleay’s claims to fame ranged from successfully breeding some of Australia’s most endangered animals to being bitten by the last Tasmanian tiger.
Born in Ballarat in 1907, he tried to set up a breeding program for the tiger in the 1930s but his idea was rebuffed by Tasmanian authorities.
In 1933 while filming a thylacine at the Hobart zoo he was nipped on the backside, leaving a scar.
Mr Fleay began working for several zoos and wildlife parks and successfully bred the first platypus in captivity in 1943.
He set up David Fleay Wildlife Park on the Gold Coast in 1952.
109: BACKYARD BIRD SPECTACLE BECOMES BOOMING BUSINESS ...
1947 — Present Day
It was a unique solution to a different kind of environmental problem.
In the 1940s Alex Griffiths discovered that Currumbin’s teeming flocks of rainbow lorikeets were enjoying his gladioli beds as much as he was. As a response he created the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.
People began visiting to enjoy the spectacle and a business was born.
In 1976 Alex Griffiths donated the land and the business, worth many thousands of dollars, to the National Trust of Queensland so that his work would continue. In 2009 the sanctuary was added to the Queensland Heritage Register.
108: OUR BIKINIS TALK OF THE NATION.
1950s
In the 1950s the hottest Queensland-made fashion item was a Paula Stafford bikini. Paula, started cutting swimsuits in half when she was 16.
Living in Surfers Paradise with her husband Bev and running beach-based businesses, she also made two-piece swimsuits with tie-sides for herself and her three daughters.
So many people asked where she’d got them, she started making them to order.
The Gold Coast made national news in 1952 when a Paula Stafford model, Ann Ferguson, sporting the latest Stafford bikini was warned off Surfers Paradise beach by the Coast’s first professional lifeguard John Moffatt.
Ann told Paula who suggested Ann head to the beach the next day with five girls in identical bikinis.
107: BIRTH OF A NEW AGE ...
1902
It’s just a little brick building in a little park in Main Beach, no bigger than a toilet.
But this little building, set in Cable Park, Main Beach, was once the hub of Australia’s communications with the rest of the world.
The hut, in Cable Street, is a monument to Australia’s early telecommunications. It was here, in March 1902, that an insulated copper cable was pulled ashore from the ship CS Anglia. The cable linked Australia to Bamfield in Canada and from there to England.
It also represented the final stage of the round-the-world telegraph system; until then submarine cables only crossed the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Known as the All Red Route, the Pacific Cable was also the first link between Australia and Britain to pass only through countries of the British Empire, by convention coloured red on world maps. It was an important link between the east coast of Australia and the rest of the world until its closure in 1962.
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