Going for Gold

I was excited to see Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast for a couple of reasons. For starters, my guide book made it sound appallingly curious: “When you’re not sunbathing, swimming or surfing, you can go bungee jumping or just window shop, eat out, socialise or wander through the malls, one of which, Raptis Plaza, is adorned by a full scale replica of Michelangelo’s David.” After reading that I was particularly sold on the idea, but also because I’d been to the Gold Coast before and could just about make out the silhouettes of audacious skyscrapers peering out over the sun-drenched sea in the distance, very mirage-like and ominous. “Surfers Paradise is approached through a thicket of petrol stations, fast-food outlets and motels - a reconstruction of the outskirts of many an American city, and in a very similar taste.” I don’t think that last bit was meant as a compliment, but then Australians (Queenslanders is maybe more accurate) seem to be united in their hatred of Surfers Paradise as representing the more artificial arse-end of Australia’s Gold Coast tourist trap. You could almost sense my girlfriend’s reluctance as she started to make the 40km descent south. “It’s shit as,” she warned me before we’d even got in the car.

But as a Queenslander herself, and quite a staunch one at that, we were trampling over hollowed ground, and her eyes were already glazing at the thought of her most cherished childhood memories. “We used to come here as kids at Christmas,” she said when we reached Currumbin, a beach further south. Or when we passed the courageous windsurfers at Miami beach (Miami beach?) and entered Burleigh Heads, she’d say, “Whenever I come here I get an ice cream from that servo.” This kind of influence makes impartial critiquing quite tricky for a writer, but although I couldn’t really share in her nostalgia (an Australian Christmas at the height of summer, for instance, is particularly different to a British one), I could at least get behind the sentiment: the beaches further south were idyllic, inviting and a perfect place for frolicking as a child. My equivalent was the Rec’ in Swindon, which was essentially a muddy field and some metal swings.

Her mood shifted as we followed the guide book and travelled delicately through the “thicket of petrol stations” which didn’t look too dissimilar to the approach of any other east coast Australian city. Mackay, perhaps. Aside from the tourists who come from all over the globe (but mainly England), the Aussies here are personified by their own ‘look’: “blond, plastic retirees” is what I’m told, those entrepreneurial developers who became wildly rich due to a large-scale property boom which has seen building work continuing to this very day. With an almost year round sunshine, the financial implications for opportunistic capitalism is practically academic. “You’ll start seeing lots of ugg boots,” my girlfriend says by way of distinction, maybe suggesting that those who inhabit the falsity of Surfers Paradise for too long become identikit embodiments of their own environment. I’m about to contest this when a blond haired woman in denim shorts and black singlet steps into her boyfriend’s yellow Lamborghini, and promptly keep my assertions to myself.

Having never been there, the comparison to Miami is lost on me, although I saw a lot more in common with the stills you see of Las Vegas. Surfers Paradise has every hedonistic avenue covered, including small theme parks, strip clubs, Irish themed bars (like the Lansdowne Road Tavern), slogan T-shirt stores, two condom shops, a strip of designer outlets from Prada to Louis Vuitton and even Egyptian themed mini golf (‘King Tutt’s Putt Putt’), in much the same way that the British have carved out replicas of Blighty into the Costa Brava. We encounter two ‘Meter Maids’ inside a shopping centre, dressed only in gold sashes, bikinis and high heels. “We’re collecting for charity,” one of them tells me, although she seems as puzzled by the concept as we are, dressed seemingly for some kind of pornographic rodeo. If they weren’t solely looking to recruit adolescent boys, then I would have seriously considered an alternative dress code.

Of course, quite why Surfers Paradise feels the need to trade on the reputation of other continents and not their own is a moot point: I spot hotels called both the Chelsea and the Dorchester. These are the skyscrapers you can see in hallucinogenic form from the shoreline up and down the Gold Coast: hotels, all as ostentatious as the next, some in towering wave-like structures, others modelled on inner-city tower blocks. My guide book politely describes the skyline as “architectural overkill”. It might be referring to the Marriott here, which boasts its own man made beach, not to mention an indoor waterfall and creek where visitors are encouraged to snorkel amongst the imported tropical fish. They’re currently in the process of building Soul, a multi-million dollar development combining both luxury apartments and retail outlets across 77 storeys. That’s the problem with Paradise, its never quite enough.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to understand what surfers actually thought of it, being as the most inaccessible part of Surfers Paradise was the sea itself, currently behind a wall of construction. Being a nuisance for good punctuation, I now wondered whether the lack of a possessive apostrophe in the name was more than just a grammatical oversight, and that perhaps a distinction needed to be made between just how much ownership Australia’s surfing enthusiasts wanted over this gratuitous exploitation of their sport. I’m told that the surf is better at Currumbin anyway, and that locals tend to visit Surfers only on ‘schoolies’. This is the gap between finishing your final high school exams and waiting for your results, where a cavalcade of stoked underage drinkers head to Queensland’s party capital and ‘get maggot’. It is not uncommon, apparently, for a school leaver to fall from one of the taller buildings, thus somewhat jeopardising their own attendance on results day. I know this to be true, unfortunately, because my girlfriend has seen it happen.

“This place makes 14 year olds act like they’re 21,” she says in moral disgust. Surfers Paradise certainly did revel in a self-consciously reckless air - that much was certain - and I didn’t need to see a group of skateboarding children trying to hold onto the back of a moving bus to work that much out. But there were bigger disappointments that would eventually lead us back to the car. When trying to find the Raptis Plaza and it’s replica of Michelangelo’s David, we had to consult two walking advertisement boards who told us, with no great sympathy, that the Raptis Plaza mall had been demolished some years ago, but not before David had been bought by a secret buyer and sent to a new shopping centre in Carrara. Proof, if proof were needed, that there is just no accounting for taste.


Sunday night. Club X and Y, an underground nightclub modelled on a cage fight. In the outside smoking area, two teenage boys are talking. One is in dark, formal work wear with buffed shoes which suggests that he might work here, the other definitely doesn’t: I quickly figured out that he was the next DJ, starting at 11pm, sat in crumpled designer tracksuit attire, cotton cap and oversized sneakers. He may have been a member of Hodouken!
“In five years time I don’t want to be doing this,” the DJ was saying. “I’m doing five gigs a week. Look at Slinky, man, he only does one gig a month.”
“Yeah, totally,” says his waiter friend.
“You know what Brisbane needs?” The waiter didn’t. “We need smaller, 100 capacity venues and get some niche shit going on.”
The waiter was left in no mind as to who would best provide this, but the DJ persists. “So - even if you don’t like what he drops - who owns it the most here?”
There is an attempt to say another name - Slinky, maybe - but the DJ quickly directs the waiter to a more satisfactory answer. “Well, it’d be you, man.” 


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘The X Factor’ (Channel 7)

Another first for Australia! A few months ago it was 24 hour news, now it’s Simon Cowell’s ‘The X Factor’; as Mr Chesty Pants and his cohorts of identikit media cartoons wipe another continent’s collective consciousness completely dry. At least Australia doesn’t have to put up with looking at him on the judging panel all week, but his presence is felt everywhere, like a ghost in the studio gallery. His minions have read the reality rulebook well, and even if the Aussies can’t quite get bona fide pop princesses on their panel (like Cheryl Cole), at least they can get the 90s equivalent.

That’s a slight dig at Natalie Imbruglia, obviously, the diminutive ex-’Neighbours’ actress who turned into the angst-ridden anti-Kylie with great songs like ‘Torn’ and, er, that other one. Being the only lady on the panel, her job is to generally get a bit over emotional. The tears fall during a particularly moving sequence involving cancer-sufferer Karl Dimachki, who sang Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ at the Melbourne auditions despite having part of his tongue removed. But generally she’s just a bit too nice, an accusation you certainly couldn’t throw at her sour-faced equivalent Dannii Minogue, replaced because she had the audacity to favour having a family over telling people off on television.

It’s funny seeing Ronan Keating being represented as some kind of volatile Piers Morgan-style mood-swinger when he talks with such an unassuming Irish chirp - he’s more like some form of cheery bouncing leprechaun auditioning for a Gucci ad. He can’t quite do authoritative, and he certainly can’t do angry, best demonstrated on Thursday night when he quite unconvincingly stormed off set because it had “been a long day” leaving some runner with a clipboard to try and coax him out of his dressing room. “We’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning,” he complains, but it’s hard to be too sympathetic when you consider his job is to sit behind a desk and vaguely look interested while being paid a GP’s salary for the effort.

I didn’t know who Guy Sebastian was before this show and, as much as he’s been amiable enough through a long week of auditions, I still don’t really care. He won the first ‘Australian Idol’ in 2003 which at least makes him the most qualified judge on the panel, but being the ‘extra one’ on a reality show is an unstable profession: this seat is essentially a revolving subs bench in which the most pleasant celebrities can be regularly exchanged and ignored. The only member who is making a conscious attempt to stand out as King of the Shits is shock jock Kyle Sandilands, who makes absolutely no effort to hide how much of a shit he really is.

When he’s happy, he says things like, “That was crazy, crazy good.” But he also uses the same faux-exclaimed radio tone when he’s dressing down his contestants, so even his compliments sound twisted. Now, unlike the rest, I can actually quite buy the notion of someone like Kyle Sandilands being a bastard: for starters, he once strapped a 14 year old girl to a lie detector live on his radio show to ask her about her previous sexual experiences, which quickly backfired when she confessed to being raped at the age of 12. He lost his job as head tormentor on ‘Australian Idol’ for that stunt. Unlike Cowell, he doesn’t own a record company, or hold a vested interest in any of this. In fact, he strikes me as one of those DJs who probably doesn’t even listen to music: a frustrated, walrus-like embodiment of Dr Fox, essentially, but nowhere near as endearing.

But we’re living in a saturated, post-Cowell televisual nightmare now, people, an environment where people like Kyle Sandilands are allowed to thrive and prosper. That may not be a reason to stop watching, obviously, but certainly make you reconsider.