In short
The Gold Coast is a fifty-seven kilometre strip of beaches backed by rainforest twenty minutes inland. The two halves have nothing in common, and many visitors see only one.
Surfers Paradise is the line of towers and the nightlife. Broadbeach is calmer, with the restaurants. Burleigh Heads has the best wave and a national park at the end of the beach. Coolangatta, on the New South Wales border, is the most family-oriented.
Arriving and getting around
The G:link tram runs along the coast from Helensvale to Broadbeach and links the seafront districts without a car. It connects to the Brisbane train at Helensvale.
Gold Coast airport is at Coolangatta, to the south, away from the tram: allow for a bus or a transfer. Brisbane is about an hour away by road.
The hinterland — Lamington, Springbrook, Tamborine — has no public transport. That is where a car becomes necessary.
What it really costs
The theme parks (Dreamworld, Movie World, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild) are the item that blows up a family budget; multi-park combined tickets exist and change the arithmetic.
Australian school holidays and Schoolies, in November, push prices up and fill Surfers Paradise with a very young crowd.
When to come
April–May and September–October: warm water, bearable air, outside school holidays.
Summer (December–February) is hot, humid and stormy late in the day.
What nobody tells you
In the southern winter, the Surfers Paradise towers cast their shadow over the beach from mid-afternoon: the sun goes behind them. The less built-up beaches further south do not have this problem.
Humpback whales pass along the coast from June to November and can sometimes be seen from the headlands at Burleigh or Coolangatta, without a boat trip.
The coastal path in Burleigh Head National Park circles the headland in an hour, free, between forest and ocean.
