Gold Coast History

About Gold Coast

Ancient History

View the Gold Coast's lush rainforest, delicate ferns and sheer cliffs and imagine a different time. A time of volcanic eruptions lasting three million years - a time when Australia was part of a super continent.

Then view remnant volcanic plug World Heritage Listed Wollumbin (Mount Warning), the remains of a huge volcano. Trek to the most extensive forest of Antarctic beech trees in Australia, echoes of Gondwanaland. View cycads, relics of plants which flourished 150 million years ago.

Human Footprints

Australia's Gold Coast was home to generations of indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

The Kombumerri people feasted at Burleigh Heads. The Yugambeh people lived in Mt Cougal and Springbrook's valleys for at least 6000 years. Aboriginal people commonly travelled through the Numinbah Valley when attending gatherings. Nightcap National park is the base for the Bundjalung nation with many sacred sites. Ceremonial bora rings continue to be special places.

White settlers moved into Australia's Gold Coast in the 1860s establishing large cattle stations. Later stations were divided to smaller sugar, cotton and dairy farms, timber getters hauled away towering rainforest trees in the hinterland. Over the next 100 years, agricultural industries included avocado, banana farms and cattle grazing to the south.

The surf beaches were largely ignored until the late 19th century when the benefits of sea bathing were embraced by Brisbane residents.

Over subsequent decades, the region's reputation grew.

During World War II the region was a base for US and Australian servicemen.

By the late 1940s, the region had been named 'the Gold Coast' as a place to buy and sell land in post World War II's real estate boom. Canal estates, holiday apartments and shopping boomed in the 1950s.

Authentic experiences, complex history, unbroken links to the past. Very Gold Coast.