In the forties, my grandfather was offered 1000 acres of Gold Coast swampland for 800 pounds. He turned down the offer, apparently, he said that you couldn't do anything with the land so it was a waste of money...Yeah, he wasn't a visionary.
Yep, we spent many happy hours in the beer garden and bird watchers with hundreds of others. Now there is some kind of indoor shopping centre and Woolworths there, what a disaster.
I lived there during the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s and moved to Brisbane as it became what I call Little Sydney, spoilt by people who made it into the fast paced metropolis they were moving from. Sunshine Coast is going down the same path.
I'm sad to hear that about the Sunshine Coast. The Sydney people spoilt Byron Bay, too. :-( Ironic that what they go there to escape, ends up being transformed into a mini version of what they left. Just stay out of the north, please!! We like it the way it is! Welcomed always, but dont change the laid back lifestyle we love.
I grew up in Brisbane but came to the Gold Coast all the time as a kid as my grand parents had a house there, now ive moved there myself and I love it!
Thanks for uploading. I have fond memories of Surfers as a 9 year old in 1971. The BBC reporter has a censorous, condescending tone throughout, which was also evident in BBC commentary on British tourist sites in Spain. The snobs that ran the BBC in those days had a problem with ordinary working folk having a vacation, which did not involve attending arts festivals.
As kids we would travel from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, stop at the bakery in Beenleigh and buy vanilla slices and fresh bread to have for lunch after a swim at the beach. We would travel home, one the single lane road back to Brisbane. The cars would be backed up for miles so we would get out of the car an kick a football around with other kids in the traffic hold ups. Great memories.
@@davidklaehn2938 yeh well our extremely shortsighted governments decided for us ages ago that we won’t develop our own peoples or systems and just simply rely on immigration and it’s all to much effort to spend and train people and look after our country so now we just import everyone and rely on that. An interesting example is a medical practice that opened up where I live in a town in southern NSW. The business is run by Sri Lankan doctors, now nothing against them as a race but they are doctors I wouldn’t get to run a bath I kid you not, this is a microcosm of things and the overall uselessness of just endlessly importing people to do a job or whatever.
Lived in Southport along the wild untamed Nerang River as a child in the 50s & teen in the 60s. Is was a paradise for kids, now it's just paradise lost.
What they have done to Southport is a text book example of how to destroy a suburb,. My intermittent memories of Southport back to the late 1960's and earlier photos I have seen are truly of a paradise that is now well and truly lost. This was amply demonstrated when the Cecil Hotel had to lease part of the building for offices and turn much of the rest into a Chinese eating house.....not to mention the great Southport hotels that have closed over the years.
Hey glen, Dave Yeager here, remember our marooning on macintosh island? They’ve certainly stuffed the place totally now, I live in NZ these days. Cheers!
As of today there are cranes all over with the high rise buildings going up everywhere on smaller and even smaller blocks. It appears there is no plot of land too small that Gold Coast City Council will not approve for a 50 storey building.
Yeah, I came in on the backend of all this, as a very young kid ….. far too young to know what was going on, or what the future might hold ….. I’m in my early 70’s now - well past my prime I’m thinking - anyone who had the vision to buy into all this stuff back then - and have the resilience to hold onto it until now … A very similar thing happened around that time here where I live in Western Australia - man; if in about 1958 I had bought up some parcels of land less than an hour’s driving time from Perth (the State Capital) ….. AND if I were still alive now …. Wow ; how rich would I be ??? Good question; but guess what ? It doesn’t matter, because when your time is through, you can’t take it with you (just thought that I would mention that, in order to provide a littlle bit of sensible perspective)
I was born in Southport in 66. That footage was maybe a little before my time. But so much was recognisable. Actually made me quite emotional.😢 I miss those days and the 2 decades after. I so wish we could go back. I don’t like the way we’re going as a country.😢
👍😊💯 I know someone who was born in Southport, probably during the 60's & others who were later eras too. I wasn't delivered in the Gold Coast myself,but how it's changed as of now I still probably would not recognise it given all the changes here over the years in comparison to other places
Southport. Its tragic what that place has become. Once a lovely growing suburb on the beach at the end of the line from Brisbane and now striving to become another Chinese high rise outpost.
Great and informative film. Thanks for uploading. My time on the Goldy was during the early to mid 80s. Just prior to the casino opening, which changed everything in a place where change has occurred since its beginning. Loved my time up there. Managing a restaurant, hitting Surfers nightclubs after work. Riding around in stretch limos. I went from a provincial Northern Beaches surfer to a night owl lounge lizard at Twains and The Penthouse nightclubs. French Champagne, beautiful female companions ... not hard to take.
The Penthouse nightclub. Ahh, the memories! Surfers Paradise Hotel beer garden on a Saturday afternoon, while staying at the Apollo. The smell of coconut oil on the beach...
No truth in rising sea levels... the elites continue to buy and hold waterfront property all around the world. Companies still invest in waterfront property and insurance companies still insure it all. Rising sea levels (and supposed rising temperatures) are part of a con that is difficult to disprove and easy to exploit for power and control.
The Playroom was my stomping ground for many years 🎉saw many great bands there 👍👍cried when they tore it down 😢 I did work at Draculas Cabernet restaurant for 5 years one of the best jobs I’ve ever had 😊 and still going strong. Also worked at Cavs steak house with owner Richard Cavill….. now the cows have gone 😢… loved the Gold Coast ❤️ still has a special place n my heart ❤️🧚♀️
Queensland version of Sydney or Melbourne. Liked it back in the 1980s after school. Different place now. Sydney is still the best IF you like city living. However, there are quite a few bush towns which are very enjoyable. 😊
No one loves to live near the ocean in the past... Australian in the old days loves to live inland in town near a waterways and farming as communities ... hmmmm since money printing is normalise.... beach front property is a new status...of who can print money faster.. hmmmm..
They wrecked it all we lived there in the 90’s and 20,s. What a shame. Suckers paradise is what we call nowadays. Moved to the SunnyCoast and here is a better life.
Joni Mitchell got it all those years ago with her song " Pave Paradise and put up a Parking Lot " unfortunately this is a global phenomena, the only upside to global warming is the dream of all the high rises forming new point breaks, we could name them after the original buildings. It's so sad we can't encourage them to move to Dalby or some place nice.
I remember how it was in the 80's and when i researched the rail line that all the way into Southport , that was dumbest thing they did pulling up the line in the 70s
September family holiday destination every year from 1962 to 1973... without a doubt the best days and years to be there.... shame its lost its magic and is now just another six lane road with massively overcrowded suburbs.... too bad !!
yeah, when people considered "sandhills" and "swamps" useless wastelands. Thank God we woke up! Anyway, I lived in one of those - a two story beach front fibro on Palm Beach in 1982. 3 or 4 surfers, and beautiful waves just outside the porch. Dirt cheap. Kirra with 20, Burleigh at dawn with a dozen, Fingal etc - empty. Great days.
G'day Andre B. Long time! Went there 07/57. Uncle Norm Langham building Top Hat Black cat motels. Offered me apprenticeship. I looked around n said : Nahl! This place won't go anywhere!?😢 I joined RAAF instead. Got back mid 1960's! Lucky enough to buy in then, at now unbelievable good prices. Silly Billy, me regrets ever leaving. Going there for long weekends frequently. Taffifs same $$ as my land cost there in mid 60's. Still a great place to live. Few old mates still around. 'Luke B Manicaros JP' now 84 n NDY!
I stayed on the Gold Coast, at Surfers, Broadbeach or Chevron Island , several times between 64-67. I remember The Captain’s Table restaurant being very classy but there was a steakhouse on the other side of the highway which was dad’s favourite place to eat. At the beach end of Cavill avenue , on the corner, was a Sauna establishment run by a friend of dad’s called Oscar who was a real character with a very colourful history back in Europe.
Oscar was my dad. He was a Polish holocaust survivor. He moved to the Gold Coast in the mid 1950s to take up a job as head waiter at the Chevron Hotel, then started doing massages on Surfers beach next to John Paterson's mutton bird tanning oil business. Later dad did massages from his shop on the Esplanade where he also had a steam/sauna bath. :)
Just saw your response. My Dad was Kevin Hicks and I went with him to your house where I remember a big surf rod on the wall. I vaguely remember your mum and, maybe , some smaller children We went surf fishing with him and he hauled in a giant Jewfish and laid it on a towel in front of the front door next morning. I hadn’t realised he was a holocaust survivor. He told other stories ( I think when we were eating at the Steakhouse I mentioned ) about smuggling valuables around Europe. This was around 1965 -1967 , I was in the area several times and it’s so long ago. I turned 16 at the end of 1966. My dad’s partner was also from Europe and had some harrowing tales. I remember how strong your dad was when he cast out - at least twice as far as my dad could manage. I just remembered the tanning oil business. I learnt to surf on hired boards on that beach.
Socially it was a mess. Dangerous for women, mental health, drunk drivers, no seat belts, the list goes on. Some things were better, but not everything. Lots or children during this period were abused, noone cared or listened. It's better now.
Plenty of tradition loving Australians . Queensland. Au at its purest white clean and sterile. A place where blacks were kept in the fringes, only brown paper bags were allowed. The boys were boys, the pub the church and women were soooo happy and fulfilled! Better be, or otherwise you know what’s coming, pissed or not, he will show her love the Aussie way. 😂
I lived in Burleigh in 1964 for a year. We lived on the Esplanade and our dog slept in mum's VW parked on the grass by the beach. This looks very familiar based on the vehicles on the road and limited state of Cavill Ave development etc. Ron Ricco was the magician act on the sand at Coolangatta. I remember the mutton bird oil man sprayed us with his suntan oil on the beach at Surfers. I got my licence at Burleigh police station after driving the sergeant's EK round the block and doing a reverse parallel park. My dad looked to buy a unit on the bluff but at £16k he gave up. Should have tried harder.
@@yasi4877 No houses left on The Esplanade now, they are pulling down the 20 storey unit buildings to replace them with bigger ones. Also 3 hour parking limits have recently gone up along the beach. Soon it will be parking meters or even worse, more high rise units on the beachside reserve and parking lots.
….and I thought it was a woeful soulless place now ! At least back then, everywhere had the same crass shoddiness but nowadays these areas are juxtaposed with the ‘exclusive’ gated communities and glitzy multi-storey apartment blocks. At least there is one good thing about the place, it attracts all the tourists from the southern states who remain blissfully ignorant of the rest of Queensland and leave us alone . 😎
In the early 1960s my grandpa bought a unit on Old Burleigh Road, Broadbeach for £4000. It was directly across the road from Kurrawa Beach in between Anna and George Avenue. The happiest memories of my life were spent there. I could see Burleigh Heads and Coolangatta to the right and Surfers to the left. I watched the skyscrapers appear during my childhood and teenage years. Nan sold the unit in 1986. It is now a very tall tower block called Carmel by the Sea. Jupiter’s changed and ruined the coast for good. Today, Australia is a paradise for globalists and oligarchs. I will never forget the day in March 2020 when Australians were banned from beaches. We have our memories and minds. No one can take that from us.
1:20 As a kid studying school geography books, I said to myself I would move to Qld one day. 40 years later I sold up in Melbourne and moved..never regretted it for one moment
Who else remembers the Slacks Creek lion park that stood where the Logan Hyperdome now stands, a cement Tee Pee was all that was left for years then it became a water park with a big tap at the top and then became the Hyperdome, the Bullens lion park was located where Movie World now stands.
You remember when the tour guide in the Bullens bus got out and kicked a Lion in the backside to wake him up so the Jap tourists could take action pictures? the guide just made it back to the bus, but only just. Yes, he was a bit tipsy, had a few beers but it was a different time then. I cant remember the tour guides name but he is a legend.
Aww!...I remember "The Sunseeker"...and coming up to Coolangatta for hols from Sydney as kids...GREAT TIMES!!... how's the guy talking though..🤔🤦🤷😂😂😂🏄🏝️
What an arrogant reporter, the Gold Coast in late sixties was great! Remembering how safe it was to walk down the street of a night, family friendly entertainment and walking around Surfers the small businesses very layback…..really nice to revisit that time.
The GC, even today, everyone wants to be there. The development going on, even just this week, is incredible. I have a love hate relationship with it. I love it in very small doses, nothing beats the long stretch of it's beautiful beaches, then I am happy to leave it all behind and head home to my much quieter locale
Meh.. I live here. In paradise every day....... With the exception of a few areas to avoid especially at night haha. Southport, now Surfers Paradise as well since the pandemic the cops vanished and all the criminals and junkies took over, Miami is also crackheads, Coolangatta is now 50/50 old people that do nothing and druggies. Palm beach is now mostly crackheads, any area closer to Brisbane is the cheap super low life people, think bash your wife and abuse your dog and hoon around and bash anyone for any reason kind of attitudes from Helensvale through to Brisbane. But... Other than 3 crackheads (I've literally counted them) Burleigh heads is still good for now, so is Robina & Varsity Lakes. Other areas are ok, but not awesome. The council's and police have really messed up since the pandemic, they allowed any junkies or homeless to literally sleep anywhere even if their trespassing or harassing tourist or joggers with immunity from the law, and because the cops were at the borders for some stupid reason, the criminals from Southport have all moved to Surfers and taken over the area, including the return of bikies which I'm pretty sure were banned or something years ago... Nice going QLD government and police... They failed at everything and now everyone suffers the cost of it.
@@TheAngryIntellect-Pandemic has nothing to do with it. There's no branch of QPS more corrupt than the Southport branch. Lived on the Gold coast right on the water for 6 months in 2006. Utterly packed with criminals, junkies and wayward youth. I got broken into 7 times in 6 months, even my external security cameras got stolen. Police were hopeless and could take days to arrive, if they even bothered to show up at all despite the station being just a few hundred metres walk and less than a minute drive away. Gold coast has been a cesspool since it's inception. It was a cesspool back when the footage in this video was taken too. It's built on the proceeds of organised crime for the purpose of laundering that money.
Build it and they will come. The gold coast has become bogan central and a bit of a stain on Australia's cultural landscape but like millions of others...I did my time there.
The Gold Coast is a horrible place to visit, I couldn't imagine living there. When I was young, it was a relaxing drive down a single lane highway from Brisbane, now its a 5 lane mega highway filled with McDonalds and KFC service stations and when you get there, its a bunch of high rise buildings..... Byron Bay or Noosa any day.
We went up there in Christmas 1963. It looks like this was around the same time. It was very hot and the beaches were nothing to write home about as they were very much affected by terrible erosion. It was the first time I saw a really small swimming pool at the front of a block of holiday flats. It looked so tempting. We drove through Coolongatta on New Years Eve. I remember the small crowds of well behaved people and the streets had some strung up lights. We had never seen anything like it because Australians did not celebrate New Years Eve back then. All in all, it was an experience, but not a very enjoyable one for a bunch of young kids travelling in a hot car.
Born at Southport in '45 and left for Brisbane in the mid '60s because the Coast was changing not to my liking. I have fond memories and still refer to BHds as 'my home town'.
OMG. I remember the time well, in fact I'm probably in the film somewhere, visiting from Brisbane as a teenager. It was a bit of a trek down in those day's.
My great grandmother had a house at Southport opposite the beach, no high rise buildings around, just family homes & retired elders, saw most go to the developers.
They should have left it as a "wind swept sea swept wasteland" the council that allowed hundreds of thousands of dwellings to be built on what is essentially a sand bar should be fined. If they had more foresight about urban planning they could have made it an actual pleasant place (assuming the gold coast "culture" changed)
That's sort of correct. While the Gold Coast Airport location is listed as Bilinga QLD, the QLD/N.S.W. border actually runs diagonally through the middle of the airport, so it's really half in Bilinga QLD and half in Tweed Heads N.S.W. 😂
There were some works going on at the airport, when the pandemic hit, and the state border was closed. This stranded the entrance to the worksite on the wrong side of the border control. I had to run the gauntlet of the border checkpoint a few times for a couple hundred metres trip into NSW. Had to have a notice affixed to the windscreen to indicate that I was a commercial delivery driver. Eventually, the site entrance was moved into the airport carpark, and this negated having to go through border control. What a time that was.
Coolangatta Airport is within QLD borders. But when you cross the border on the M1 you will be driving on NSW highway, but looking across at the airport.
we lived in ipswich queensland australia in 70s it used to take 3 hrs back in the day to get from ipswich to the gold coast today only takes 1 hr thought i might mention it
What year was this film made? I am guessing from The Seekers... 1964? It looks very different now. The commentator was rather sneering... probably pissed off he got transportation to Australia...
theyre still around. the challenge is finding one with no rips, good breaks, and of course, sunshine for most of the year. like, you can buy a few acres in tassie for nothing? jyst um. yeah. antarctic ocean currents. brrr!
It was paradise then - this footage before 1966, but today ...! Can't get a decent home under a million along the entire coast now, unless its a tiny area with nothing you need like hospitals etc.
Comments section full of boomers that were more than happy to get rich from the golden era of shares and real estate but now they're all moaning for the good ol' days and 'the simple life'. 😄 Look what YOU did. Couldn't read about it.
So strange reading the (I assume) locals / ex-locals saying how much better it was, and how it’s no good now .. and while I don’t necessarily doubt it, and while that can surely be said for the whole country .. As a non-local I’ve generally liked the times I’ve been up to the Surfers as opposed to being in Sydney!
I lived there during the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s and moved to Brisbane as it became what I call Little Sydney, spoilt by people who made it into the fast paced metropolis they were moving from. Sunshine Coast is going down the same path.
@@wilmaw1190 Hmm not sure if I can agree 100%. Sure it’s going to be very busy and active but Sydney is just lots of people grinding away … It’s not as “touristy”. GC is touristy. Helped by the climate and beaches too. GC doesn’t have that dull serious vibe. But in the context of being a quiet, sleepy seaside town, then I wouldn’t doubt you there.
I know a Mr Misson who was born in coolangatta in 1930s and he said he remembers when electricity arrived when he was barely a teenager and he would play with it in the house like a new fun novelty toy 😮😅
