Surfers Paradise - BBC report from 1965

Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast, Queensland. Vintage BBC report from 1965.
The southernmost strip of the coast of Queensland is totally unlike anywhere else on the continent. It's a new growth.
There are plenty of tradition-loving Australians who are sickened by it, who can't mention its name without a shudder.
But if you believe the local propagandists, this is the modern Australian's idea of paradise.And they'll show you the colour of his money to prove it.
The Gold Coast. They call it the Gold Coast.
The heart of the Gold Coast is around 60 miles south of Brisbane and 600 north of Sydney. It stretches from Coolangatta on the New South Wales border to Southport, 20 miles further north.
The North Wales border] At the northern end, the most glamorous end, the land is only a few hundred yards wide, tapering to nothing. It lies between the wide waters of the Nerang River and the Pacific Ocean.
Ten years ago, it was a windswept, sea-swept wasteland, sand hills and river-mouthed swamps.
Today, it's the place that one Australian in every three dreams of for 49 weeks of the year.
Even the sturdy station wives and the rough-cut grovers of the cattle lands no longer regard Alice Springs or the Isa as the great gay towns at the end of the road. They too vow that one day they will save enough of the season's earnings to get over that 1,500 miles to the Gold Coast.
Australia has 13,000 miles of coast, most of it warm, most of it sandy. Yet one Australian in every three came last year to some hotel, motel, boarding house, caravan or tent along this 20-mile strip.
They spent 30 million pounds.
The establishments that took the money are spread alongside a road rather over-grandly called the Pacific Highway.
They form an untidy, unplanned string of motels, camping sites, cafes, petrol stations and holiday bungalows.
Twenty ragged miles of them put up in a fearsome hurry to catch the pound notes which are suddenly falling out of the sky.
Separately and together, they are shamelessly imitation. They even have the same names.
They've erected images to the same eternal gods of fun.
But the heart and soul of the Gold Coast is Surfers Paradise. Surfers Paradise is the name that the working girls murmur in their Sydney and Melbourne sleep. Surfers Paradise, they're the words which the farmers roll around their tongues for the rest of the year with the last taste of the smoky tea and bacon.
And this is the Paradise. That stucco-faced hotel over there was the building which gave the resort its name. It was owned by a man called Cavill who bought that plot for 35 pounds. A few years ago, his widow sold it for 350,000 pounds. And now this is Cavill Avenue, the main street of the Gold Coast. And this crossroad where it crosses the Pacific Highway is the very centre of Australian joy.
Within a few hundred yards of this crossroads are practically all the names that are becoming synonymous with the ripest pleasure throughout this vast country.(...) The motels were the most coveted beds, the ones revered as being set in the very heart of the heart of the coast.
It's a Paradise beer garden where no one is too proud to meet or too full to take another beer.
The nightclubs, the niteries and the eateries, digbies, the bird's nest, the starlight lounge, the castaways, the captain's table and the jolly roger.
For about 200 yards down the highway from the crossroads, each foot is tight with souvenir shops, snack bars, juice bars, bikini bars, shooting galleries, beauty centres, outriggers for men, airline offices, surf shops and the stands of the seaside photographers.
And then comes the very dream castle itself, the centre of a complex of restaurants and clubs and bars with twin swimming pools and white-shirted waiters bending to the browning bodies on their expensive grills.
The Chevron Paradise.
It all looks so busy, so prosperous, so sure of itself.
Yet only ten years ago, nobody would have stopped here. There was nothing to stop for. Over this same 20 miles, you would have been lucky to find anywhere to bed down for the night or to buy a cup of tea.