Going For Gold
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday May 8, 1999
From sightseeing with Japanese tourists to the mysteries of the unitap, JIM SCHEMBRI wades into the Gold Coast waters.
IT'S amazing. The moment you touch down on Queensland soil you start to feel better. That southern State cynicism just melts away as the palm trees lining Coolangatta airport wave at you, as if to say: "Welcome to the Happiest State in the Federation, the Put Your Feet Up State, the Smile State, Queensland."
In 1997, as part of a more destination-specific marketing campaign, a new slogan was launched: "The Ever Changing, Always Amazing Gold Coast", which is a bit of a mouthful, but was designed to tell people exactly where the State's choice panoply of pleasure was.
In 1998, the Gold Coast enjoyed visits from about 3.9 million people (including 1.1 million from overseas) who collectively spent about $2.5 billion, mostly on Fuji film, zinc cream and keychains with little dolphins on them.
Given all the things that draw people to the Gold Coast, however, the chief reason why so many people go there can be neatly summed up in one word: sun.
Thanks to a long-standing contractual agreement between the Gold Coast Tourism Bureau and God, the Gold Coast enjoys an unusually high proportion of fine, sunny days. One could, I suppose, consult detailed studies of meteorological data to establish the statistical evidence to support this claim. But I prefer to get my scientific verification from beautiful young Gold Coast models.
Of all the sunny days the Gold Coast enjoys, my first day, alas, was not one.
As I looked out over the Pacific from the balcony of my room at the pyramidal Conrad Jupiters Hotel, the mid-afternoon sky was a giant grey doona of unfriendly clouds. Ah, Queensland: Beautiful One Day, Hoping for Improved Weather Conditions the Next.
Of the several hundred thousand brochures extolling the virtues of the Gold Coast, alarmingly there is not one that tells you anything about the best damn tourist attraction.
The Aquabus is an amphibious craft that takes people for tours along the beach road, past Sea World and around the Nara Resort before plunging into the water.
It then chugs along the Broadwater for a bit before remounting the bitumen and returning to base. The brochure makes no mention at all of a unique aspect of the tour.
More Japanese visit the Gold Coast than from any other country. There were 389,000 of them in 1998, compared with a paltry 149,000 from New Zealand, 110,000 from Europe and a piddling 77,000 from the United States. All over the Gold Coast you see people wearing little badges with the Australian and Japanese flags denoting the person speaks fluent Japanese. Many brochures and guides are written in Japanese and there are tours designed specifically for the Japanese tourist.
I wanted to commune with these people. The faces on the good people at the Aquabus booth in Orchid Avenue did look a tad quizzical. But, no, there was no reason why a non-Japanese person could not go on an Aquabus tour full of Japanese tourists.
"Do you speak any Japanese?" they asked. "Not a word," I said.
My command of their language was limited to what I'd picked up entering and leaving Japanese restaurants, but I soon found the language barrier was no barrier at all.
Being the only non-Japanese on a crowded Aquabus makes you more of a photo opportunity than anything the looming Gold Coast skyline has to offer. They wanted pictures and, boy, did I oblige. Cameras were exchanged in a frenzy of whirring motor drives as I posed with my friendly arm around at least eight Japanese tourists, winking, smiling and giving the old thumbs up as they laughed and smiled their toothy smiles. At tour's end we bowed each other farewell. I felt I had done my bit for bilateral relations. Also, I felt some spiritual stirrings deep inside.
The atrium at Conrad Jupiters is like an RSL club that's been force-fed steroids. There are a gaggle of great, affordable eateries, an open performance space, and, of course, a casino. It prides itself as a gambling venue. Even the lift signs proclaim the casino as the "heart" of the place. Every possible reminder is given, from the chocolate gambling chips left on your bed to the posters of wheelbarrows full of money claiming "bigger payouts", and the ubi-quitous slogan, pasted everywhere from matchbooks to pamphlets, enticing you to "come out and play".
This is all perfectly great and fabulous if you are into gambling. If, perchance, you are not, the heart of Conrad Jupiters is a soulless place. A late-night walk through its two levels presents you with that eerily homogenous sight common to all gambling venues: rank upon rank of people sitting at poker machines, sucking on cigarettes while plugging change into slots and pressing buttons with undue urgency.
And there's not a smile in the place, apart from the one the security guard flashes at you as you exit.
The place is popular, though. Even at 6am, both levels of the casino are well stocked with wishful thinkers, hoping for that $100,000 jackpot before breakfast. Ah, forgive me. It's that southern State cynicism creeping in again.
Much more uplifting is the new show in the Jupiters Theatre called Inneuvre. This show is absolutely fantastic for two reasons. First, it is a non-stop, non-verbal, intermission-free cavalcade of breathtaking trapeze acts, dazzling juggling, laser lights, hula-hooping, and a show-stopping routine featuring a guy dressed as a giant Slinky.
Second, it doesn't take up too much of your time. At a tight 90 minutes, the show is clearly designed for people who are already tired after a long day's Gold Coasting, but who still want to cram something in after dinner.
An early morning wake-up call gets me up and out on the balcony to witness that legendary, golden Queensland sun as it rises slowly, majestically, over the Pacific horizon, casting a shimmering gleam over the water, perhaps even bursting through a scattering of obliging clouds to herald the beginning of yet another glorious Queensland Day.
Alas, again, there was just a sky congested with grey clouds. Nobody had warned me about this.
Soon after, I discovered something else nobody warned me about - the unitap in the shower. Red on the one side means hot water, blue on the other means cold, but what does the backward and forward motion do?
You can spend minutes trying to decode this thing, and because of the time it takes for the water temperature to change, you can end up standing in a stream of water that alternates from scalding hot and sub-Arctic cold while you jiggle the unitap around, trying to work out how to operate it.
LONG before you get anywhere near the turnstiles of Dreamworld, you can see its Tower of Terror piercing the sky. Even as you walk about the park, you can't ignore it. It's like a beacon daring you to try the ride that everybody is talking about.
About the only place it doesn't dominate your field of vision is from the inside of the nursery enclosure at Tiger Island. Here, you can face a terror of a different kind, namely being ravaged by a wild cat.
For $275, four people can get up close and personal with full-size tigers and have their photos taken. All this, of course, takes place under the strict supervision of experienced trainers, but take note: before you go in you have to sign a disclaimer so that if a tiger does happen to tear your face off, Dreamworld won't buy the bandages.
The Dreamworld tigers are part of a breeding program designed to help save the species from extinction.
"The goal is to hopefully get people to care more about tigers," said Tiger Island's assistant manager, Andy Goldfarb. "They're critically endangered. There are only about 4,000 left in the wild." As for the white tigers, all 400 in the world exist only in captivity.
Facing tigers is one thing. Withstanding 4Gs is something else. The aptly named Tower of Terror, opened in 1997, is a solid steel phallus rising 125 metres and comprises two rides. One hoists you up 119 metres, then drops you at 135 km/h for five terrifying seconds. The other ride puts you in an oversized roller-coaster-type carriage and catapults you horizontally from 0 to 160 km/h in seven seconds. You then shoot vertically up the length of the tower, before free-falling backwards to where you started.
The free-fall drop was great, but, after the catapult ride, I had to crawl out of the carriage and remain supine until the blood returned to my brain. This was not a joke. I have witnesses. These rides are not for the faint-hearted, either. Big signs warn of the medical dangers.
Just how far one can stretch one's enthusiasm for the wonders of nature is pretty much tested by the trek involved in getting to the famous glow-worms of Queensland.
A spine-shaking 4WD haul up the bumpy back road to Tamborine National Park included some tracks that are almost vertical. Then there was the long walk through the darkened forest with the aid of torch light before we finally got to the sprinklings of little green lights emitted by fly larvae. It is an impressive sight, even if you are about to collapse with exhaustion.
You wouldn't credit it, but glow-worm touring is an aggressively competitive business. Only six tour permits are granted at any one time and operators guard their secrets jealously. Our tour guide waited until another tour group passed by, gave his rival a perfunctory "g'day", then made sure he was out of sight before leading us down a secret track to show us another tiny clump of glow-worms close up.
My final morning brought another early wake-up call to enjoy that priceless Gold Coast sunrise. But zippo. Ah, Queensland. Beautiful One Day, Looks Like You're Not Going To See the Sun Even Once the Next.
To compensate, I strolled to the beach. In the muted light, through empty malls and deserted walkways, the monolithic apartment towers took on an eerie quality. Brightly coloured in pastel pinks, blues and oranges, the uniformity of their facades was striking - hundreds upon hundreds of balconies with patio furniture all exactly the same. It was a surreal vision in the stillness of early morning.
On the beach, the sand had already been ploughed by footsteps and a few dozen people were having early morning dips as surf lifesavers set up for the day. The sky was still a thick blanket of grey and the light was low, but the air was warm and welcoming.
I didn't plan for it but, what the hell, I went in. I stripped down to my thermonuclear-blast-white Garfield boxers and hit the surf. Arms outstretched, I let the breaking waves pull me in then thwack me over the head. As I awkwardly got back into my clothes - not an easy task without the benefit of a towel - discarded McDonald's wrappers lazily tumbled by before catching on a nearby bush.
On the next bench an elderly man stripped down to his bathers. His body was brown, toughened by decades of surf punching. He noticed my difficulty. "That's always the toughest bit, putting your socks on," he said with a smile before going in. His wife, Peg, remained on the bench, watching as he plunged into the crashing waves.
They'd been on the Gold Coast 47 years, she told me, and they went to that beach every Sunday morning. She never goes in, though ... she doesn't like to swim, not there anyway. The sea was nice to look at, she said, but she preferred quieter water.
Back at the hotel I contemplated that memorable encounter and the quiet irony of a Gold Coast long-timer who doesn't much like the surf. As I hit the shower, my contemplative mood was violently disrupted by an even more compelling encounter, courtesy of the hotel's unitap.
Ah, Queensland. Beautiful One Day. Blasting Your Genitals With a Jet Stream of Ice Cold Water the Next.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
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