| Wikipedia Guide to Brisbane
Surfers Paradise (28°00'S 153°25'E)
is a beach resort town on Australia's Gold Coast in Queensland,
noted for its many high-rise hotels and apartment buildings.
The central feature of the Surfers Paradise CBD is Cavill
Mall, which runs through the centre of the main shopping
precinct, directly to the beach. The record-breaking Q1
residential tower is situated on Clifford Street in Surfers
Paradise.
James Beattie, a farmer (and no relation
to current Queensland Premier Peter Beattie) became the
first European to settle in the Surfers Paradise area
when he staked out an 80 acre farm on the northern bank
of the Nerang River, close to the location of present-day
Cavill Avenue. The farm proved unsuccessful and was sold
in 1877 to German immigrant Johann Meyer, who turned the
land into a sugar farm and mill. Meyer also had little
luck growing in the sandy soil and within a decade had
auctioned off the farm and started a private ferry service
and built the Main Beach hotel as tourist attractions.
By 1889 Meyer's hotel had become an official postal receiving
office and the subdivisions surrounding it were given
the name Elston, named by the Southport Postmaster Mr
Palmer after his wife's home village in Nottingham, England.
The Main Beach Hotel licence lapsed after Meyer's death
in 1901 and for the next 16 years Elston was a tourist
town without a hotel or post office.
In 1917 a land auction was held by Brisbane
real estate company Arthur Blackwood Ltd, who were trying
to sell subdivided blocks in Elston as the 'Surfers Paradise
Estate', but the auction failed because access to the
area was still too difficult. This was the first recorded
reference to the Surfers Paradise name, but like the Gold
Coast , the title may well have been part of local vernacular
prior to the land auction.
Elston began to get considerably more
visitors after the opening of the Jubilee Bridge in 1925
and the extension of the South Coast Road; the area was
serviced until that time only by Meyer's Ferry at the
Nerang River. Suddenly, Elston was no longer cut off by
the river and speculators began buying up land around
the villages of Elston, and Burleigh Heads. Estates down
the Coast were heavily promoted and hotels began opening
to accommodate both tourists and investors.
Brisbane hotelier Jim Cavill opened
the Surfers Paradise Hotel that same year, and suddenly
the town had its first real landmark. Located between
the ferry jetty and the white surf beach just off the
South Coast Road, it became a popular spot and various
shops and services sprang up around it. In the following
years Cavill led a push to have the name Elston changed
to the more marketable Surfers Paradise and in 1933 his
lobbying paid off and the town officially acquired its
present name.
The boom of the 1950s and 1960s was
largely centred on this area and the first of the tall
apartment buildings that now characterise the area were
constructed in the decades that followed. Little remains
of the early vegetation or natural features of the area
and even the historical association of the beachfront
development with the river is tenuous. The early subdivision
pattern remains, although later reclamation of the islands
in the Nerang River as housing estates, and the bridges
to those islands, has created a contrast reflected in
subdivision and building form. Some early remnants survived
such as Budd's Beach - a low-scale open area on the river
which even in the early history of the area was a centre
for boating, fishing and still-water swimming.
Some minor changes have occurred
in extending the road along the beachfront since the early
subdivision and The Esplanade road is now very much a
focus of activity in this part of the Gold Coast . Promenading
and people-watching takes place in this area where land
use encourages not only residential activity but tourism
with supporting shops and restaurants. The intensity of
activity, centred on Cavill, Orchid and Elkhorn Avenues,
is reflected in the density of building development. Of
all places on the Gold Coast the buildings in this area
constitute a dominant and enduring image visible from
many vantage points in the city from as far south as Burleigh
Heads as well as from the mountain resorts of the hinterland
and beyond.
Since 1991 the Champ Car World Series
has run an annual race on the streets of Surfers Paradise,
an event currently known as the Lexmark Indy 300.
Each Wednesday there is a night market
held along the beachside boardwalk at the top of Cavill
St., and on Friday nights as well in the summer.
Schoolies Week is celebrated by
around 50,000 high school graduates each November.
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