Address & Contact
Surfers Paradise QLD 4217
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James Beattie, a farmer, became the first European to settle in the area when he staked out an 80-acre (32 ha)
farm on the northern bank of the Nerang River, close to present-day Cavill Avenue. The
farm proved unsuccessful and was sold in 1877 to German immigrant Johan 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 the
farm and started a ferry service and built the Main Beach hotel. By 1889, Meyer's hotel had become a post receiving office and subdivisions surrounding it were named Elston, named by the
Southport postmaster after his wife's
home in
Southport, Lancashire, England. The Main Beach Hotel licence lapsed after Meyer's death in 1901 and for 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 to sell subdivided blocks in Elston as the 'Surfers' Paradise Estate', but the auction failed because access was difficult. This was the first recorded reference to Surfers Paradise, but like the
Gold Coast, the title may already have been local vernacular – surfing having been demonstrated in
Sydney in 1915.
Elston began to get more visitors after the opening of Jubilee
Bridge and the extension of the South Coast Road in 1925; the area was serviced before then only by Meyer's Ferry at the Nerang River. Elston was no longer cut off by the river and speculators began buying land around Elston and
Burleigh Heads. Estates down the coast were promoted and hotels opened to accommodate tourists and investors.
Brisbane hotelier Jim Cavill opened Surfers Paradise Hotel that year, and the town had its first landmark. Located between the ferry jetty and the white surf beach off the South Coast Road, it became popular and shops and
services sprang up around it. In the following years Cavill pushed to have the name Elston changed to the more marketable Surfers' Paradise and in 1933 the town acquired its present name.
The boom of the 1950s and 1960s was centred on this area and the first of the tall apartment buildings 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, have 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 swimming.
Some minor changes have occurred in extending the road along the beachfront since the early subdivision and The Esplanade road is now a focus of activity, with supporting shops and restaurants. The intensity of activity, centred on Cavill, Orchid and Elkhorn Avenues, is reflected in the density of development. Of
all places on the
Gold Coast the buildings in this area constitute a dominant and enduring image visible from as far south as Coolangatta and from the mountain resorts of the hinterland.