Paradise Found

When people talk about a holiday to the Gold Coast, typically they'll mean a holiday to Surfers Paradise.

While Southport is considered to be the city's CBD for residents, Surfers Paradise is very much the tourist capital - as it has been for more than 80 years.

At the centre of Surfers Paradise itself is Cavill Avenue, stretching about a kilometre west from the Nerang River to the Pacific Ocean in the east.

Named for hotelier Jim Cavill, the most prominent feature on the street between 1920 and 1980 was the Surfers Paradise Hotel.

Built in a typical Queenslander style, the hotel eventually came to boast a beer garden, tropical gardens, a zoo and, around the corner of Cavill Ave and the Gold Coast Highway (now Surfers Paradise Boulevard), was the Bird Watchers bar, a place where drinkers kept an eye on the birds of the non-feathered variety.


The souvenirs pictured here were produced after 1937 when this version of the Surfers Paradise Hotel was built, the original having succumbed to fire a year earlier.

Testament to how iconic the hotel had become is evidenced by the range of souvenir types its image adorned, from salt and pepper shakers, pin dishes to porcelain trios.

Interestingly, two of the souvenir items by two different manufacturers feature the same image. The earliest of the souvenirs likely to be the Hudson and Middleton Delphine China pin dish.

The transfer print looks positively photographic in its view westward towards the hotel tower.

And indeed you'd be right. The original image is above right. (Source: Gold Coast Local Studies Library).

The second is the Colclough trio of cup saucer and plate, as you can see the rendering is much cruder and the colours more garish.

Unfortunately the Surfers Paradise hotel no longer exists, it was torn down by developers in the early 1980s to be replaced by a bland, beige non-descript shopping centre and high rise hotel.

Look here to see if you must, but Nick and Nora prefer to remember her as she was.

There's a metaphor to be gleaned of course.

Surfers Paradise and its high rise skyline are a bit like the wealthy 'ladies-who-lunch' that the Gold Coast has in abundance - looks good from a distance but up close, no amount of showy bling and make-up can disguise age and world weariness.

Ah for the days when she may have been gauche but also fresh, youthful and her appeal, genuine.