A Seaside Gem

It wasn't until starting on Nifty Knick Knacks did Nora come to appreciate why one of the oldest settlements on the Gold Coast, Southport, has nothing remaining of its 19th century past.

While Southport quickly found its reputation as a resort town in the early 20th Century, one of its main businesses was to process and ship out the cedar that grew in abundance in the Gold Coast Hinterland, about 15 miles inland.

The majority of the houses and businesses in Southport were made of that timber but were rapidly superseded by more robust brick structures in the 1920s and 30s - such as the Southport Town Hall.

While the early pioneers of the township are merely remembered in the form of street names, living history still does exist at Birkbeck Jewellers located in the heart of town in Nerang Street.

Established in 1912 by Vic Birkbeck before the First World War cast an irrevocable shadow, across Southport as the Great War did across all of Australia's townships, the store still remains in the street and is now run by Vic's grandson Michael Ford.

Then as now, Birkbecks sold giftware like this Shelley porcelain candy dish complete with product serial number and additional stamp "Made In England EXPRESSLY for VR Birkbeck Southport QLD". Note: the fish salt and pepper shakers baring the same print aren't Shelley. Nora doesn't know what they are, except gloriously kitschy.

The view at the front looks south, quite possibly from the end of Nerang Street, to take in the Broadwater foreshore down over the Jubilee Bridge and over to Main Beach.

Here's a photograph from the Gold Coast City Council's Local Studies Library of the original view (with a few more cars and extraneous buildings that were removed in the souvenir).

It registration number dates the candy dish to between 1925 and 1945 but judging by the souvenir image this dish is more likely to be from the first part of the period.

Here the view down the Esplanade (now known as the Gold Coast Highway) as it is today. Traffic now moves over the Gold Coast Bridge (locally known as the Sundale Bridge) towards the high rise holiday towers of Surfers Paradise.