---
node: dest_gold_coast
type: destination
slug: gold_coast
title: "Gold Coast"
lead: "The Gold Coast is a ribbon of surf beaches and high-rise resorts on Queensland's south-east corner, Australia's best-known holiday strip. Behind the sand lie theme parks and a green subtropical hinterland of rainforest and waterfalls."
published: 2026-08-10
updated: 2026-08-10
image_file: gold_coast.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Surfers_Paradise_Beach,_Gold_Coast,_Queensland,_Australia.jpg"
image_author: "Jack Bain"
image_license: "CC BY 4.0"
---

## Overview

The Gold Coast runs for some fifty kilometres of near-continuous beach, from the broadwater in the north to the New South Wales border. Surfers Paradise, with its wall of towers and its patrolled surf, is the heart of the strip, but the coast is really a string of beach suburbs sharing one long shoreline. The climate is warm and sunny, the swell reliable, and the mood squarely built for holidays.

## Highlights

Surfers Paradise and Burleigh Heads anchor the surf beaches, the latter a favourite point break beside a headland reserve. The big theme parks — Dreamworld, Sea World, Warner Bros. Movie World and Wet'n'Wild — cluster inland, while the hinterland ranges of Lamington and Springbrook offer rainforest walks, waterfalls and glow-worms. Warm water and a long, patrolled coast make it one of the country's premier places to learn to surf.