The Death of Surfers?

For the past few weeks, I've been doing a bit of work for an organization in Surfers Paradise that works with city council to organize events and marketing for the suburb. It's been one of the most interesting jobs I've had, mostly because what I've learned in this short time about our town is astounding.

Surfers Paradise is a beautiful place on the beach, built on tourism and living perpetually in holiday mode. It's full of restaurants, hotels, shopping, and attractions like mini golf and wax museums, and the weather is pretty great year-round. For decades, it's been the place Aussies would holiday to with their families, it's the place where high school kids celebrate the end of their school years (Schoolies Week) and it's where international backpackers come to party, enroll in English courses, and soak up the sun. People come to have fun here, and then they come back again because it's such a great place to be. This has been going on for years and years, and so construction companies just kept building, and people keep opening more businesses up here. But realistically, this kind of success couldn't really go on forever.

These days Surfers is full of "For Lease" signs on storefronts and "Vacancy" broadcasted from hotel signs. It seems more and more shops are disappearing all the time, and the sidewalks are sometimes empty enough to envision a tumbleweed blowing through. There's even a totally vacant shopping mall on the main street, hidden behind a few shops that are still open (for now at least). We've been noticing this more and more the longer we stay, but what truly hammered in this point was taking on a work assignment where I ended up chatting up local business owners and managers about the state of Surfers.

Contest at Sin City nightclub

No one is entirely sure of the real reason why Surfers has lost so many visitors, but the consensus is, business began getting slower in the last three years or so and is now at an all-time low. And something's gotta give! Is it the global economy keeping international visitors away? Is the high Aussie dollar simply making it a better deal for Australians to holiday in Bali instead? Or has Surfers simply lost its former lustre/sense of fun/wholesomeness? Some say that Surfers has become too much of a party town, gotten a really bad reputation, and now families are staying away or heading to other suburbs on the Gold Coast (well, with a bar strip full of drunken hooligans roaming the street nearly every night, and some nightclubs offering a contest to win a boob job, it's no wonder). Others say that town planners and restaurants are trying to get too fancy/expensive and it's forcing families to eat at KFC when they holiday — we'd have to agree with this argument too, as we've been unable to rationalize spending a small fortune ($20 a plate AT LEAST) on a Thai or an Italian dinner. Some are saying that we need to encourage locals from other suburbs to visit, but the city keeps raising the cost of street parking ($2 an hour now I'm told) in Surfers but not in other suburbs, which is working against promoting local business as well. And it's not just Surfers that is suffering: newspapers are reporting Gold Coast with the highest unemployment rate in Australia (government reports are saying it's around 7%, though some are saying it's probably closer to 13% unemployment — some timing for our arrival!), thanks to both the lull in tourism and the collapse of some of the biggest construction companies/investors.

It's not happy days for Surfers Paradise, but underneath all of that, what I encountered most in longtime locals was a real nostalgia for what the place once was (it was the most exciting place in Australia to spend a week, or simply a laid-back beach town, etc.) and a strong belief that it'll make a comeback, with some careful resuscitation. Some people think some twinkly lights along the streets might liven up the atmosphere. Some say we need a better arts culture (me included) and perhaps some quality entertainment, beyond buskers (ugh)— like a music festival to get people coming back. Agreed! I've actually just signed on to work with the same organization for the next few months (I start my new job this week!), to help run the upcoming Surfers Paradise Festival in June/July and a bunch more events following that, so I'm extra excited now to find out what will happen to this place. And I'm not quite sure when it happened, but I think somewhere along the way, perhaps while I was meeting so many lovely locals, and discovering all the hidden gems of this weird and wonderful place, I think I'm starting to lose a little piece of my heart in this town, too. -D.

Culture Sponges

To kick off Adrian's mid-semester break, we figured it was about time to get a little culture. The Gold Coast is beautiful and all, but we're realizing more and more that we're truly city people. And although many people call the Gold Coast a "city", we'll argue that a place without museums, an art scene, live concerts, intriguing bars and cafes (in our opinion at least), a Chinatown, or any old buildings just isn't really a city. Lucky for us, Brisbane, Queensland's capital city, is only about an hour and a half away by train. So we hopped on the train early Easter Saturday, and made a beeline for Brissie's museums and skyscrapers.

Actually, Brisbane isn't entirely new to us — we visited Brisbane 3 or 4 times on our last Australia trip, but only to visit people, dash to the airport, or run exciting errands like filing tax returns. And just the week before Easter (this year), we actually ended up in Brissie by accident, when we took a wrong turn on the highway on the way to a farmers' market with our friend Tim, and ended up downtown. But this day was our first of our real exploring — grabbing a map and soaking it all up, just like sponges.

Brisbane's CBD was totally what we were craving: oooold ornate buildings (OK, not Europe-old, but Australia-old!), stately downtown shopping malls, stores selling cufflinks and high-end men's business clothes, pedestrian streets, and people everywhere! In a flash, we'd found a camera shop selling a Canon battery charger I was having one hell of a time sourcing in Oz, Starbucks frappuccinos, and signed a petition against animal testing. We soon reached the Brisbane River, a wide ribbon of water that loops through the city centre (and can be credited with some of the flood footage you would have seen back in January). Crossing over the bridge to Southbank, the views were pretty awesome, and we tried to imagine what it was like when the river was carrying boats and pontoons swiftly out to sea...

We'd heard great things about the "21st Century: Art in the First Decade" exhibition, which was about to close at the Gallery of Modern Art (aka the GoMA). It was a totally unique exhibit, and so cool to see some work by great present-day artists, as we're usually looking back at artists from previous decades and centuries, even. We only wished we had two days to spend wandering the exhibition, which was a collection of works by present-day artists from all around the world. Highlights included a massive 'cloud' of plastic shopping bags (Pascale Marthine Tayou, Cameroon), a cardboard-box installation, a piece by exiled Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and a performance by an "iPhone Orchestra" (seriously!). A lot of it was really interactive, like a huge table of skyscrapers made of white Lego being constantly rebuilt into new forms; Rivane Neuenschwander’s (of Brazil) I wish your wish had visitors making wishes on paper and swapping their wish for someone else's wish, which was printed on ribbon and hung on a huge wall (somehow we both ended up choosing "I wish to travel through time and space"); a postcard sending project, and all kinds of other cool concepts and ideas. And it was all free! [Sadly, I don't think we would never find an exhibit this good — and free — at the AGO in Toronto!]

We still had a few big things on the to-do list, and kept wandering. Turns out Southbank is a pretty great place to hang out — there were tons of people out at the huge park along the river, which was almost finished from the post-floods fix-up. The Southbank Markets were really cool — full of way better arts/crafts/fashion than you'd see at the Surfers Paradise night markets each week, for sure. And there were so many great spots to stop and have a snack or a beer! We were introduced to Fat Yak ale and we're big fans since...

As it got dark, we found ourselves crossing the river again, this time ending up in the Botanical Gardens, where we met an interesting fellow that gave us a good rundown of what those flood days were like, pointing out scraps of plastic bags and debris still in trees. As we started to get really hungry for dinner, we found ourselves totally lost in a part of the map that looked fairly ordinary — reminding us of our least favourite part about Australian cities: street names often change by the block and there's absolutely no grid or logic to the majority of the urban planning. We ran into a Kiwi couple in the same boat as us, and somehow found our way to Fortitude Valley, where the plan was to have a nice-ish dinner (too hungry- went for Grill'd burgers!) and check out the nightlife (Adrian was promptly turned away from a bar because he was wearing shorts!). But anyway, it was a long and eventful day where we got a good taste of Brisvegas. And little did we know, we'd be back two days later to have some Anzac Day beers — with a lot of sailors! — under the massive Storey Bridge, at the Storey Bridge Hotel. It's certainly no New York, but it'll definitely do for an urban fix while we're living down in Gold Coast!