The Gold Coast is Australia's great open-air amusement park: 57 kilometres of golden beaches, a jungle of beachfront high-rises in Surfers Paradise, and the biggest concentration of theme parks in the country. It's where Australians come to tan, surf, ride roller coasters and go out at night, a destination built for pleasure and fun that doesn't take anything too seriously.
But the Gold Coast is more than neon and adrenaline. Its beaches are among the best in the country, with legendary surf spots like Burleigh Heads and Snapper Rocks. And just half an hour inland lies the 'hinterland': a green world of subtropical rainforest, waterfalls and lookouts in Lamington and Springbrook national parks, with bioluminescent glow worms and breathtaking views. In a single day you can go from a roller coaster to a waterfall in the rainforest.
This guide covers the best of the Gold Coast from a practical angle: which theme parks to choose and how much they cost, which beaches and surf spots not to miss, how to escape to the hinterland, how to get around by tram for 50 cents a trip, when to go and where to eat. An ideal destination for families and for anyone after sun, beach and endless entertainment.
Long before the high-rises, this coast was the Country of the Yugambeh people, with more than 60,000 years of connection to the land; the Kombumerri clan lived along the Nerang River and the beaches, and the area was a place of large gatherings (corroborees) between peoples. The 'cedar getters' arrived in the 19th century in search of valuable red cedar, and Nerang was founded in 1865. Tourism took off with the Jubilee Bridge (1925) and Jim Cavill's Surfers Paradise Hotel: in 1933 the town was renamed Surfers Paradise, and the high-rise boom and surf craze of the 50s and 60s created the city of today. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of sunshine and the tropics: land of dozens of Aboriginal nations, born as the Moreton Bay penal settlement in 1824, separated from New South Wales in 1859 and shaped by sugar cane, wool and mining. It is home to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, two World Heritage Sites.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the skyscrapers, the roller coasters and the neon, this strip of golden beaches and winding rivers was the Country of the Yugambeh people, whose clans have lived on the land between the Logan and Tweed rivers for many thousands of years. Estimates vary: some sources point to more than 20,000 years of archaeological occupation, and the Yugambeh people themselves claim a connection to the land, water and sky of more than 60,000 years. The Yugambeh spoke the Yugambeh language, which had several dialects, and were organised into clans. One of them was the Kombumerri, a coastal people who lived along the Nerang River and the beaches of what is now Surfers Paradise.
This was no ordinary land. It was a meeting place. The area around today's Bundall, near the Nerang River, was a gathering point for peoples who came from as far away as Grafton to the south and Maryborough to the north to hold great 'corroborees' (ceremonies with dance, song and storytelling). Traces of Aboriginal campsites and intact 'bora rings' still survive in the Gold Coast and Tweed River region. These earth circles were where sacred ceremonies were held.
Above all, the Kombumerri were a water people. They fished the estuaries, gathered oysters and shellfish, and knew the cycles of the rivers, tides and beaches in fine detail. The name 'Nerang', now carried by a river and a town, comes from an Aboriginal word that translates as 'shovel-nosed shark'. Every corner of this coast had a name, a story and a meaning long before the first European arrived.
The arrival of Europeans on this coast followed the same pattern as so many other regions of Australia: first came economic interest, then the dispossession of the First Peoples. What drew settlers here in the mid-19th century was timber. The rainforests of the interior (the hinterland) were full of red cedar, a tree whose wood was extremely valuable and in high demand. The 'cedar getters' (the men who cut the cedar) moved into the forests in large numbers, and in 1865 the town of Nerang was founded as a base for the timber industry. Farms, cattle and crops of sugar cane and arrowroot followed.
For the Yugambeh, this advance was devastating. They lost access to their hunting grounds and sacred sites, and they suffered the violence and diseases of the frontier. The institutional blow came with the Aborigines Protection Act of 1897, a law that opened a long era of 'protection' and segregation. Under it, many Yugambeh were removed from their traditional lands and sent to missions and reserves scattered across Queensland, cut off from their Country, their language and their culture.
Yet not everyone left. Many Kombumerri managed to stay on their traditional land, finding work with farmers, oyster growers, fishermen, timber cutters and at the local mills, while keeping up their cultural practices, laws and customs as far as they could. That persistence is why the Yugambeh community is still alive and active today. The Yugambeh Museum in Beenleigh preserves and shares their language and history, and the Traditional Owners are taking an ever larger part in the city's cultural life.
The tourist destination began to take shape in the early 20th century, when people from Brisbane discovered these beaches as a holiday spot. The turning point came in 1925, when the coastal road linking Brisbane and Southport was completed. That same year, a hotelier and entrepreneur named Jim Cavill bought land in a little village called Elston and built the Surfers Paradise Hotel there. It had 16 rooms and a small private zoo that became an attraction in its own right. Cavill sensed what those untouched beaches were worth.
The hotel ended up naming everything. The 'Surfers Paradise' brand proved so appealing and commercial that on 1 December 1933 the town of Elston was officially renamed Surfers Paradise. It was a marketing move ahead of its time, and it worked: the name conjured up sun, waves and pleasure, which was exactly what people were looking for.
The name 'Gold Coast' itself has a curious origin that has nothing to do with real gold. It appeared as a nickname around 1950. After the Second World War, returning soldiers found that land and property on this coast had become very expensive, so they half-jokingly started calling it the 'gold coast' because of what it cost. Locals took offence at first, but the name stuck, and the tourism industry eventually embraced it. In 1958, the South Coast Town Council was officially renamed the 'Gold Coast Town Council'. And so a whole city ended up named after a complaint about prices.
From the 1950s and 60s on, the Gold Coast took off. In 1959 the first high-rise, the Kinkabool, went up in Surfers Paradise. It marked the start of the coastline's transformation into the 'wall' of towers it's known for today. The city filled up with hotels, apartments, casinos and nightlife, in a property and tourism boom that kept growing for decades.
At the same time, surf fever arrived. In the 1960s, as surf culture took off around the world, the Gold Coast became a byword for this new way of life by the sea. Its surf breaks became world-famous, among them Burleigh Heads, Kirra and Snapper Rocks with its legendary 'Superbank', and they drew surfers and tourists from all over the planet. The city embraced an identity of sun, beach, tanned bodies and guilt-free fun.
The next big chapter was the theme parks. In the 1980s and 90s the big parks opened: Sea World, Dreamworld, Warner Bros. Movie World and Wet'n'Wild. They turned the Gold Coast into Australia's capital of family entertainment and gave it a second draw beyond the beach. The city firmly established itself as the country's top holiday destination.
Today the Gold Coast is the sixth-largest city in Australia, with more than 600,000 residents, an international airport, a modern light rail (the G:link) and an economy that combines tourism, construction and services. In 2018 it hosted the Commonwealth Games, which put it in the global spotlight. But behind the glamour of the skyscrapers, another, older story still beats: that of the Yugambeh and the Kombumerri, whose presence over tens of thousands of years is being recognised again in place names, in the Beenleigh museum and on cultural tours. And behind the beach, half an hour away, the subtropical rainforest of the hinterland survives. These are the Gondwana Rainforests, a World Heritage Site, and a reminder that long before it became the gold coast, this was always an extraordinary place.
