Mayor Tom Tate says Queensland’s first beach bar will be at Broadbeach

Mayor Tom Tate says the Gold Coast will win the race to get Queensland’s first beach bar, telling ‘pale-faced’ opponents to ‘go back to the mountains’. Read where he expects it to be built – and when.

Mayor Tom Tate predicts the Gold Coast will have a beach bar by the summer of 2026 in a permanent location at Broadbeach.

But he has warned those opposed to it – he describes them as “pale-faced” and “from the mountains” – to stay at home in the hinterland.

Mr Tate was asked by this masthead if the city was now in a race with the Sunshine Coast and northern Queensland tourism hot spots after Premier David Crisafulli backed the concept.

Speaking at the Future Gold Coast lunch last Friday, Mr Crisafulli, when interviewed on stage by The Courier Mail editor Chris Jones, said the city would be “poorer for not having them” as long as they were not the domain for only the rich and famous.

“I don’t think it’s a fair race, because by next summer we will have it, that’s my prediction. It might not be the end of this year, but the following summer in 2026,” Mr Tate said.

The beach bar trial at Kurrawa on the Gold Coast - visitors on the foreshore deck.

“So I don’t see anybody else getting the beach bar going that quickly. It will be for the summer period. I think people are happy to sit on the beach for six months of the year.

“The other six when it’s cold, I think take it away, leave it alone. I’d like to test the market, let an operator have a go at it for five years in one location. My first location would be Broadbeach, where we did the trial successfully.”

The beach bar at Kurrawa on the Gold Coast after the council staged a trial.

City sources said the council had spent the past four years moving forward with the beach bar brief, securing support from both former Labor Premiers.

A trial of the concept took place at Kurrawa in the summer of 2021-22.

But the delays had been bureaucratic red tape, with the City still to sort out land management and native title issues.

Mr Tate said he agreed with the Premier about access, and the need to make sure prices were “normal” and “not South of France prices because we are not France”.

He said the ideal beach bar was having a surf, getting a thirst and “drinking a XXXX Gold”, eating fish and chips.

“For those people who are critical this is only taking a small part of the beach, not even 50 metres,” Mr Tate said.

The Kurrawa Beach Club and its outlook on the Gold Coast.

“We’ve got 66 kilometres. If you don’t like to go to the beach bar, you have 65.5kms choice to choose from. I understand it’s not for everyone.”

Critics like Save Our Spit’s Steve Gration have described the beach bar trial as a “dismal failure”, and others questioned surveying samples that showed 69 per cent of locals and 74 per cent of businesses were supportive.

“Some of the people who complain, looking at them, pale and all that sort of people from the mountains, they don’t go the beach, they just come down to protest. I say no worries, we love you, just go back to the mountains,” Mr Tate said.

Follow @PaulWestonGC 

 

Originally published as Mayor Tom Tate says Queensland’s first beach bar will be at Broadbeach