Surfers Paradise Information - Accommodation, Attractions, Fine Dining, History, Business Directory & More
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All About Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

The Gold Coast is located in the South-east corner of Queensland, Australia. It is the second most populous city in the state and the seventh most populous city in the country. Gold Coast City stretches from Beenleigh on the southern fringe of Logan City, for approximately 60km (38 miles) south to Coolangatta situated on the New South Wales border, and extends west to the foothills of the Great Dividing Range in World Heritage-listed Lamington National Park. Tweed Heads and sections of Beaudesert are also commonly referred to as being a part of 'The Gold Coast' region. However, they do not fall into the statistical boundaries of Gold Coast City. The city is renowned for its sunny subtropical climate, world-class beaches, waterfront properties, wide array of tourist attractions and long, high-rise-dominated skyline. Cheap & affordable accommodation in resorts can be found all throughout the Gold Coast and especially in Surfers Paradise - this is why it is a key holiday destination for families, couples looking for a romantic getaway & even retired hiloday makers.

Surfers Paradise Accommodation (Resorts & Hotels)

Accommodation options available range from backpacker hostels to five star resorts and hotels. The most common style of accommodation is three and four star self-contained apartments. Five Star hotel accommodation and 5 Star Resort accommodation is also available for those living the life of luxury!


Surfers Paradise Resorts & Apartments

You will be sure to find your perfect Gold Coast holiday accomodation option here on apartment accommodation, with the added peace of mind of instantly confirmed and secure bookings at our quality Surfers Paradise holiday resorts.If you are looking for beach-front stays or even hinterland stays, the gold coast will cater for your needs.

Last Minute Accommodation

One attraction with many holiday goers is the ability to book many apartments, resorts & hotels quickly online & directly with the resorts. This style of last minute acommodation enables everyone to get the best deal at the very last minute. Some of these such services inclue WotIf (What If), QuickBeds, LastMinute & More.

Self Contained Acommodation

We have found over the years that many families prefer self contained accomodation for their stays as they are able to cater their own meals for every member in the family & it allows for more flexibility for meals & living. This type of acommodation usually has more than just a kitchenette but in fact full kitchen facilities and much more.

Surfers Paradise Attractions, Theme Parks & Events

Surfers Paradise Events & Attractions

  • Major tourist attractions include internationally renowned surf beaches, World Heritage listed hinterland national parks, and theme parks including, Dreamworld, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild Water World, Warner Bros. Movie World, Currumbin Sanctuary, Fleays Wildlife Park, Australian Outback Spectacular and Paradise Country.
  • 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. This race includes V8 Supercars, girls, burnout competitions & more.
  • 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. These markets are also found in Broadbeach & Carrara / Cararra.
  • Schoolies Week is celebrated by around 50,000 high school graduates each November.
  • The city consists of 57 kilometres of coastline with some of the most famous beaches in Australia including, Broadbeach, Burleigh Heads, Currumbin, Greenmount, Kirra, The Spit and Main Beach, Mermaid Beach, South Stradbroke Island, Surfers Paradise and Tallebudgera.
  • The Gold Coast has over fifty private and public golf courses which vary in the number of holes, par and exclusivity. Generally, golf club members play competitively every Saturday. A short list of eighteen hole golf courses within the city includes Arundel Hills Golf Club, Emerald Lakes Golf Club, Hope Island - The Links, Parkwood International Golf Course, Royal Pines Resort, Sanctuary Cove - The Palms, Sanctuary Cove - The Pines, Southport Golf Club, The Glades Golf & Spa, Robina Woods, Palm Meadows, Lakelands, The Colonial and Gainsborough Greens.
  • Horse Racing: The Gold Coast Turf Club hosts weekly horse races every Saturday from 12 o'clock midday for a minor entry fee. Facilities include a bookmaker's ring, betting tote through UNItab, four small to large function venues and public food and drink outlets.
  • Rugby League: On May 27, 2005, it was announced that Gold Coast was successful in its bid to submit a rugby league team into the National Rugby League (NRL) competition. The announcement came after much dedication and persistence from managing director, Michael Searle. The Gold Coast team to commence its inaugural season in 2007 is known as the Gold Coast Titans. The 'Titans' will be the first nationally recognised sporting team for Gold Coast since the collapse and or relocation of other such ventures such as the Gold Coast Seagulls and Gold Coast Chargers (Rugby League), Gold Coast Rollers (Basketball) and Brisbane Bears (VFL/AFL).
  • AFL: Australian rules football is a popular sport on the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is home to 3 out of 8 of the clubs in the semi-professional Queensland State League, the state's highest level of competition. The Southport Sharks are a highly successful club which has participated in bids to ender the Australian Football League, they have also produced young local stars such Queensland's first number one pick in the AFL Draft, Nick Riewoldt. Other Gold Coast clubs include the Broadbeach Cats and Labrador Tigers.
  • Sports Super Centre: This facility is located at the northern end of the Gold Coast, in the suburb of Runaway Bay, has been earmarked as a world class training facility. The centre includes nine purpose built villas which provide accommodation for touring groups or sporting teams, FINA approved 50 metre outdoor swimming pool, an IAAF certified 10 lane 400 metre athletic track with 3000 seater capacity stadium, a 600m2 gymnasium and health spa.

The Tourism Industry

Tourism is Gold Coast City's main industry, generating total revenue of $2.5 billion per annum. Gold Coast is the most popular Queensland tourism location. with over 13,000 available guestrooms contributing over $335 million to the local economy each year. Accommodation options available range from backpacker hostels to five star resorts and hotels. The most common style of accommodation is three and four star self-contained apartments.

Major tourist attractions include internationally renowned surf beaches, World Heritage listed hinterland national parks, and theme parks including, Dreamworld, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild Water World, Warner Bros. Movie World, Currumbin Sanctuary, Fleays Wildlife Park, Australian Outback Spectacular and Paradise Country.

Surfers Paradise Car Hire

If you are looking for car hire in Surfers Paradise then you wont find a more affordible flexible option with a huge number of care hiring companies on the coast! If you are looking for a hatch, sedan or wagon; family car or people mover, 4WD (four wheel drive) or a van or even a truck - we can arrange this for you. Rates start from just $29 per day for a basic car hire service.

Surfers Paradise Map

Gold Coast Map with Surfers Paradise in the centre.

Surfers Paradise Map - Gold Coast, Queensland

Surfers Paradise History on the Gold Coast

Small numbers of Aboriginal people inhabited the greater Gold Coast region prior to European settlement, with some archaelogical evidence suggesting their custodianship of the land extended back 23,000 years.

Captain James Cook became the first European to note the region when he sailed the coast on May 16, 1770 in the HM Bark Endeavour. This exploration was however focussed on areas south of Gold Coast region in the northern rivers of New South Wales.

Captain Matthew Flinders, an explorer charting the continent north from the colony of New South Wales, sailed past in 1802. The region remained uninhabited by Europeans until 1823 when explorer John Oxley landed at Mermaid Beach, which was named after his boat, a cutter named Mermaid.

The hinterland's red cedar supply attracted large numbers of people to the area in the mid 1800s. The western suburb of Nerang was surveyed and established as a base for the industry. Later in 1875, Southport was surveyed and established and quickly grew a reputation as a secluded holiday destination for the upper class Brisbane residents.

In 1925, tourism to the area grew rapidly when Jim Cavill established the Surfers Paradise Hotel. The population grew steadily to support the tourism industry and by the 1940s, real estate speculators and journalists were referring to the area as the "Gold Coast". The true origin of the name is still debatable. The name "Gold Coast" was officially proclaimed in 1958 when the South Coast Town Council was renamed "Gold Coast Town Council".

During the 1970s, high-rises began to dominate the area now know as Surfers Paradise and later in 1981 the airport was established. More recently, the city has been promoted on the world stage with the construction of the world's tallest residential tower, Q1.

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.

Other Suburbs on the Gold Coast

The Suburbs of the Gold Coast includes a range of suburbs, towns and rural districts.

  • Arundel
  • Ashmore
  • Beenleigh
  • Benowa
  • Biggera Waters
  • Bilinga
  • Broadbeach
  • Bundall
  • Burleigh Heads
  • Burleigh Waters
  • Canowindra
  • Carrara
  • Chirn Park
  • Coolangatta
  • Coombabah
  • Coomera
  • Currumbin
  • Ephraim Island
  • Ernest
  • Helensvale
  • Hope Island
  • Isle of Capri
  • Kirra
  • Labrador
  • Main Beach
  • Mermaid Beach
  • Mermaid Waters
  • Miami
  • Molendinar
  • Mudgeeraba
  • Nerang
  • Nobby Beach
  • Ormeau
  • Oxenford
  • Pacific Pines
  • Palm Beach
  • Paradise Point
  • Parkwood
  • Pimpama
  • Reedy Creek
  • Robina
  • River Links
  • Runaway Bay
  • Sanctuary Cove
  • Santa Barbara
  • Sorrento
  • South Stradbroke Island
  • Southport
  • Sovereign Island
  • Surfers Paradise
  • Tugun
  • Varsity Lakes
  • West Burleigh
  • Willow Vale
  • Wongawallan
  • Worongary

Common Gold Coast Knowledge

Many people on the Gold Coast will know various slang & common misunderstandings with the local lingo. For example someone from the Gold Coast may be called a Coastie or Very GC. people often mistake spelling for the area with examples such as Surfer Paradise without the plural or even Surfers Paradice. Some people even try to use options such it for Surfers Parradise / Parradice. Surfers Paradie. At the end of the day some people may not know the best way to pronounce it when searching for what they are looking for but we believe by visiting this website they will find the best option for each category. Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast has many award winning resorts & fine dining & even more so why not come and try it all out for yourself!

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