Burleigh Good Times

While Southport, Coolangatta and Surfers Paradise are the three main suburbs which people msot identify with the Gold Coast, the suburb of Burleigh shouldn't fall too far behind.

Located between two headlands, Little Burleigh to the north and Burleigh Headland to the south, the area has been popular with holidaymakers for well over a century.

The large headland also contains a coastal national park and on some of its upper reaches homes with million views established in the 1920s were co-opted into being lookouts for Japanese submarines during World War Two.

The first souvenir pictured is an ashtray whose maker is unknown but it features the stamp of Southport jeweler, VR Birkbeck.

It possibly dates back to 1936 on the basis of this photograph belonging to the New South Wales state library.

Look familiar? (Don't forget to click for a larger view)

As they so often did with souvenir transfer prints, the image was touched up of inconvenient details, in this case the tent city of holidaymakers.

The next souvenir, a Staffordshire porcelain trio features the view more or less looking the other way - at the entrance of the national park looking north along the sweep of coastline which is still popular with swimmers and surfers.

Here's the view from roughly the same location today.

This souvenir is probably late 1950s or 1960s by virtue of the fact that it is captioned 'Overlooking Burleigh Heads, The Gold Coast'.

Although tourism marketers had been using the 'the Gold Coast' since the 1940s. It wasn't officially gazetted as the name of the town until 1958.


The last piece is a small milk jug. Sorry, for some reason the jug just didn't photograph well.

If you want to see what the view is click here. It's the 16th picture down but do take the time to scroll through the rest of the site's very interesting history of Burleigh.

Can't get enough of Burleigh? Can't blame you. It's Nick and Nora's favourite beach.

And if you can't get there in person then CoastalWatch.com is the next best thing.