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Gold Coast

All About the Queensland Gold Coast

By Larry Rivera, About.com

Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Surfers Paradise: a favorite destination on Australia's Gold Coast

© Australian Tourist Commission 1997

The Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, is one of the country's most popular holiday destinations.

Here, on the Queensland Gold Coast, you can go for golden beaches under a golden sun, and go for gold at a glittering casino. If this is your idea of a dream holiday — as it is for many Australians and overseas visitors — you won’t go far wrong by going to the Queensland Gold Coast.

There are 30-something kilometres of golden sand stretching from the eastern Queensland-New South Wales border in the south to Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise and the Stradbroke islands in the north.

They use the terms Gold Coast or Surfers (short for Surfers Paradise) interchangeably; but that strip of golden land is really the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise is just one of the towns (but a mighty lively town) which dot the shoreline of the Pacific.

Cosmopolitan air

The Gold Coast is a holiday mecca for Australians and visitors and is particularly popular in the winter when the cold hits the lower third of Australia. But it is in the summer when many low-cost holiday deals are available, except during the Christmas season and long holiday weekends.

The Gold Coast has very much a cosmopolitan air and the lifestyle is easy. There are restaurants of many types, nightclubs, leisure complexes, and other centres of holiday fun, all along the coastal strip.

The number of theme parks alone is enough to fill a vacationer’s week.

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