Elon Musk on the Gold Coast: Remarkable inside story told for the first time

For the first time, we reveal the behind-the-scenes story of how this newspaper helped uncover the truth behind a controversial incident involving billionaire Elon Musk, now the subject of an international podcast.

A controversial billionaire, a secret rendezvous, alleged spies and A-list stars … this story has it all.

This is the untold tale of how not just the Gold Coast but this very newspaper found itself at the centre of ‘intergalactic’ intrigue that is now part of an international podcast.

The year was 2017, the billionaire was Elon Musk and the Gold Coast Bulletin journalist was Sally Coates, now a participant in episode three of new podcast Elon’s Spies.

Created by Britain’s Tortoise Media, founded by former BBC News director and The Times editor James Harding and former US ambassador to the United Kingdom Matthew Barzun, the podcast claims ‘free-speech champion (Musk) uses private investigators and surveillance to target everyone from whistleblowers at his companies, to online critics and people in his own life’.

Amber Heard and Elon Musk pictured in Broadbeach. Picture: Nigel Hallett.

Which brings us to the Gold Coast in 2017, when Musk’s then-girlfriend Amber Heard was here filming Aquaman, and the Bulletin was dragged into a contretemps between the movie star and her infamous billionaire boyfriend.

Ms Coates, who now works as a strategist at safety and leadership company Everyday Massive, said the newsroom received an anonymous tip that Heard was spending time with a young local footballer who was seen spending nights at her rented house and leaving early in the morning looking like ‘the cat that swallowed the canary’.

The message also included Heard’s exact address.

So the Bulletin’s reporters did some creative digging, and discovered that the message’s metadata showed the information was sent from California on August 4, 2017 from an iPhone using the IP address belonging to Space Exploration Technologies Corp — better known as SpaceX.

It seemed the call may have been coming from inside the house.

As podcast host Alexi Mostrous said, ‘never underestimate the tenacity of journalists at a local paper’.

Bulletin journalist Sally Coates with Elon Musk.

Sally Coates with Amber Heard.

The day after receiving the tip, August 5, the couple announced they had broken up and on August 11 the Bulletin ran a story about the mysterious tip.

Then, said Ms Coates, the story took an unexpected twist.

The very next day, August 12, she was interviewing a source about an entirely different story at Burleigh’s Paddock Cafe, when in walked Musk and Heard, after arriving together in a black Tesla.

Ms Coates said she approached both to ask for a photo, but they refused to be pictured together and instead each individually posed with her.

With those photos and that sighting, she wrote a story that the pair appeared to be back together, billed by the Bulletin as an ‘intergalactic exclusive’.

Then came a phone call.

“This voice said, ‘Sally, it’s Elon’. And I was like, what the hell?” said Ms Coates.

“His number one objective in that call was to say that Amber had done nothing wrong, he was very much in damage control, saying Amber is a wonderful person, none of the ‘rumours’ should be believed.

“But when I asked him about the tip coming from SpaceX, he did not deny it.

“He said there were people who acted on his behalf without telling him they were doing it, that there were ‘other agendas’ at work.

“When I asked him if there would be any disciplinary action for the person who sent this tip, because it was pretty egregious, he said no because he didn’t know who to discipline.

“Not only did he have no urgency to find out, but this is Elon Musk. Surely he could figure out who at his company sent a tip, and surely not many people knew the address that Amber Heard was staying at … he could have certainly found out if he wanted to.

“He also asked me whether I had followed him to the cafe, which I absolutely had not – I was there first.

“To me, that’s the mindset of someone who is used to tracking and spying on other people.”

Amber Heard and Elon Musk pictured at the Shingle in Broadbeach. Picture: Nigel Hallett.

For podcast host Mr Mostrous, Ms Coates’s experience at the Bulletin painted a concerning picture of Musk.

He claimed her story, taken with other evidence, provided an insight into how Musk thinks and acts.

“A couple of months ago, I got on a call with a source … who told me that Amber Heard was placed under surveillance when she was filming Aquaman between April and October 2017,” said Mr Mostrous.

“The source said that Musk’s team … contracted with an Australian firm of private investigators.

“The source said that the surveillance on Amber was extensive, that it went on for weeks if not months, at a cost that ran into hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars.

“The Australian company is said to have used six or seven operatives to spy on Amber every night, followed her in multiple cars and pretended to be paparazzi if they were caught.

“They even used infra-red cameras and drones.”

Mr Mostrous said while the Elon Musk of 2024 was more certain of his position, even richer and more powerful, he believed some habits die hard.

“When I started this investigation, I had three main questions. Does Musk use private investigators in both his public and his private life? Does that show a pattern of behaviour that tells us something about his character?

“And finally, is there evidence that Musk or people acting for him were willing to push the boundaries when it came to how that information was obtained?

“Whether you choose to engage with him or not, Musk is shaping your world and mine. So it matters how he does that.”

The Gold Coast Bulletin is featured in episode three of podcast Elon’s Spies

Ms Coates said she harboured some concern speaking about the billionaire, but believed there was safety in numbers as one of many voices in the podcast series.

“I do worry, but my rational mind says he has bigger fish to fry,” she said.

“I’m not holding anything over him, there’s no threat of legal action, I have nothing to gain and I can’t be discredited because it’s all on the public record.”

She said she had no regrets, even if it cost her an out-of-this-world promise made by Musk.

“It was crazy in the newsroom when he called me and then I had his number, we were all going nuts,” she said.

“So I thought, why not make the most of this opportunity and messaged him if he could save me a seat on his mission to Mars. He wrote back and said ‘consider it done’ with a rocket emoji.

“But it’s OK, I don’t think I want that anymore anyway.”

Besides, she said one of the best parts of the entire Elon episode was what it did for her hometown.

“I really enjoyed how the Bulletin came across in the podcast, it showed the tenacity of a regional newspaper,” she said.

“There would be a lot of papers who would have been scared to run those stories back then, but the Bulletin was ballsy. They went for it.

“I think we should be proud of that.”

Originally published as Elon Musk on the Gold Coast: Remarkable inside story told for the first time