Barely making it to Gold Coast

By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

IT was simply the hugest beach I have ever seen in my entire life. Boracay Beach isn’t even half the size of the beachfront at Surfer’s Paradise, the most popular stop in Gold Coast.

This is how it looks like once you step into the beach at Surfer’s Paradise. Notice how long the stretch of sand is before it breaks into the sea. The waves are simply astounding — no wonder they call it Surfer’s Paradise. I can spend an entire day just listening to the crashing waves.

After much prodding, I had to take a dip. Lunita, a fellow journalist from Singapore and an avid surfer, said it’s a must that anyone who visits the Coast should at least “be one” with the ocean by dipping one’s feet in the water. Our plan was to get in the ocean but we got there late and it was a bloody cold spring night, and the strong waves made me think otherwise. The waves are so strong you need to be a strong swimmer or else the undertow might throw you back into the sea.

For a while, I thought about Gold Coast as some sort of beach commune where after getting off from the bus, you can already jump into the sand and see surfers in action (and maybe ogle at girls in bikinis but like I said, it was already past 8 p.m. when we got there). Dead wrong. It was like this one big collection of hotels and skyscrapers by the beach. This is how the skyline looks like from the beach — and that’s just a small portion because it stretches along the coast.

How we got there — and why we missed the sunset — is quite a story. Once the conference was over, there were three of us who decided on giving Gold Coast a go. The others wanted to see the kangaroo and koala sanctuary. No offense to them animals, but the idea sounded boring at that time. There’s always Animal Planet, right?

Brisbane Central Station to Gold Coast is about an hour and 15 minutes by train. But half an hour later, they cut the trip short because of an accident. So we got off along with this throng of people and from some station, we were herded into a bus to get to another train station.

Finally after waiting for more than an hour, in the biting cold, a train finally arrived that would take us to Gold Coast. This is Lunita and Malovika (a journalist from India) on the train, still looking psyched to hit the beach despite the delay — thus, missing the Gold Coast sunset.

To get there, go down in Nerang station (fare from Central is around 10 Aussie dollars) and from there, a bus takes people straight to Surfer’s Paradise. We finally arrived around 8 p.m., just enough time for a quick McDonald’s dinner and a stroll on the beach. Less ideal without the sunset, we managed to take pictures anyway.

The last train back to Brisbane is around 11 p.m., so that gave us about an hour to spend on Surfer’s Paradise. Gold Coast makes for an excellent day trip — catch the earliest train from Brisbane and then come back at night, ideally after getting yourself hammered with a few drinks on the beach.

Surfer’s Paradise is teeming with restaurants, bars and for aspiring surfers, almost every surf brand you know from Quiksilver to Billabong. Lunita even came back the next day to buy a second-hand surfboard. From how it looked, there are simply so many things to check out in Surfer’s Paradise alone. One hour and some at Gold Coast was more than enough to convince me that this is one awesome place worthy of succeeding visits. �

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