Sea World founder Keith Williams (1929–2011) talks about its origins as a waterski show. Sea World opened on the Gold Coast on 30 October 1971.

A popular tourist destination, the theme park includes rides, an oceanarium and a marine mammal park. It was the first theme park in the region and is now joined by Warner Bros. Movie World and Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast which opened in 1991 and 1984 respectively.

This short clip uses archival footage effectively to build a portrait of Sea World's humble beginnings and show what it's become. The lack of information about the other Gold Coast theme parks is frustrating but it is an understandable result of the chronological narrative format employed by this news special.

The excerpt comes from the Seven News Brisbane special Queensland: Flashback 150 Years, broadcast on 30 May 2009. It was produced for the 150th anniversary of the state of Queensland. Queensland formally separated from New South Wales on 6 June 1859.

Queensland Playground is a comprehensive look at the Gold Coast during the late 1950s. Produced by the Commonwealth Film Unit (directed by Richard Mason and shot in Vistarama and Eastmancolour), it portrays the Gold Coast as an inviting paradise where it’s always warm and where you can relax and leave your cares behind.

Scenes of large numbers of people doing a Gold Coast version of the hokey-pokey seem odd now but they were an institution at the time and a  chance for younger people to meet one another. Every morning at 11 am Doug Roughton would call out over the beach radio and huge numbers of people, sometimes as many as 300, would gather to participate.

It also features the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where flocks of lorikeets arrive twice a day to be hand fed.

Can the Gold Coast cope with a dramatic rise in population? This excerpt from the Film Australia documentary Populate or Perish shows the rapid development of the city.

Located south of Brisbane, this 70 km holiday strip was originally called the 'South Coast'. In the 1950s, however, inflated real-estate prices inspired its new name, the Gold Coast. The influx of people to the area swelled the population and led to development on a grand scale.

Already the eighth largest Australian city when this documentary was made, by 2007 the Gold Coast had become the largest non-capital city in Australia and Australia's sixth largest city overall.

This lighthearted newsreel story tells of a police raid on a Gold Coast pyjama party in 1959.

Bernie Elsey, a member of the Surfers Paradise Progress Association and owner of the Beachcomber Private Hotel, got the idea of staging pyjama parties from their popularity in London nightclubs.

They took place around the hotel's swimming pool; guests wisely wore swimming costumes under their pyjamas.The hotel was licenced for accommodation but not for the consumption of alcohol on the premises and complaints from neighbours eventually led to police raids.

The nightly raids at 10 pm soon became part of the fun for partygoers. Revellers threw bottles of beer into the pool to prevent confiscation by the police, who reputedly had to strip off their clothes to retrieve them. The controversy gave Elsey free publicity and led to bigger crowds.

This clip is from Cinesound Review No. 1425.

This Ten Eyewitness News report from 1989 tells of the first known shark attack to take place in a Gold Coast canal. Ten-year-old Kris Fredriksen was swimming in the water outside his home in Mermaid Waters when the two-metre shark bit his leg. 

Waterfront canal living is a feature of the Gold Coast. Residences with canal frontage often have pontoons with boats allowing direct access to the sea. As a consequence, sharks can travel up the canals, using them to feed and give birth.

Researchers believe bull sharks are frequent lurkers in some of the city’s busiest waterways and dedicated shark hunters claim to capture at least one a week. While fatalities have been rare, it's still unwise to swim in the Gold Coast waterways, particularly around breeding season.

This clip from Australian Diary No. 083 shows the popular beach version of the hokey-pokey that attracted crowds of up to 300 people and the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where flocks of lorikeets arrive twice a day to be handfed.

In the 1950s the Gold Coast had a local population of 21,000 people that increased to 110,000 during the holiday season. It was a time when the area was on the cusp of major development; now it is Australia's sixth largest city.

The NFSA has a number of home movies of Gold Coast holidays. This clip from the 1970s is an excerpt from home movies shot by Eileen Smith. It features Jack Evans' Porpoise Pool, Bullen's Lion Park, boat tours, waterskiing, Marineland and other attractions. The closing image of an XP Falcon car hooked up to a caravan is enough to bring back memories for many people.

By the late 1950s and 60s, the Gold Coast was rapidly becoming a major holiday destination. All along the coast, resorts, guesthouses and holiday homes sprang up swelling the population five times over during the holiday season. The region now attracts over 13 million visitors and approximately 12,500 new residents each year.

As seen in this Ten Townsville News report, the Floating Chapel was the first of its kind in the world, cost half a million to dollars to build and is based on a 17th century structure.

It was designed as a distinctive location for overseas holidaymakers to get married.

You can add this floating chapel to a list of Queensland curiosities that includes the Big Pineapple and the Golden Gumboot.

This is the trailer to Australian film The Coolangatta Gold, directed by Igor Auzins and released on 22 November 1984, which led to the establishment of the Ironman race of the same name.

The film is about two sons (played by Colin Friels and Joss McWilliam) who compete for the love of their authoritarian father (Nick Tate). He is determined that one of his sons should win the Coolangatta Gold contest, which involves swimming, running and surfing.

To shoot the movie the producers decided to run the race as an actual competition. Many well-known Ironmen at the time competed but it was won by relative unknown, Guy Leech. Leech also won it the following year. The event wasn't held again until 1991 with the inaugural women's competition commencing in 2005.

The film was a box-office disappointment but the Coolangatta Gold event has become a fixture on the Ironman surf lifesaving calendar.

The whale in this news report was fortunate to be rescued by a diving team from Sea World after it got caught in a shark net off the Gold Coast.

Each year, from April to November, whales migrate from the cool waters of the southern ocean to the warmer waters off Far North Queensland. Since the ban on whale hunting in the late 1970s, numbers have been steadily increasing with upwards of 27,000 expected to make the annual journey.

Gold Coast whale watchers may spy humpbacks, killer whales, southern right whales and dwarf minke whales. One repeat traveller is Migaloo, a white humpback thought until recently to be the only white whale in existence.

This Movietone News newsreel highlights the attractions of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast in the early 1960s.

We see people lining up to feed the porpoises at Jack Evans' Pet Porpoise Pool, which opened at the mouth of the Tweed River in 1961. Local identity John Paterson, wearing his trademark white pith helmet topped by a stuffed mutton bird, liberally distributes his 'Vita Tan' sunscreen lotion.

There is also footage of the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary with rainbow lorikeets flocking for their twice-daily feed of bread soaked in honey. The clip concludes with speedboat racing and water skiing displays on the Nerang River.

By the 1960s the Gold Coast's infrastructure had grown significantly. The local building industry was able to support the development of high-rise holiday apartments and hotels and Surfers Paradise established itself as the major tourist destination on the Gold Coast.

Please note: the sound quality in this clip is of variable quality.

This silent newsreel clip shows people sunbaking on the Gold Coast. Warm temperatures and golden sands were a magnet to holidaymakers from the 1950s onwards, swelling the population from around 21,000 people to over 100,000.

This clip also shows the early development of the Gold Coast canals which are now such a feature of living in the region. Roughly 400 km of canals have been constructed forming an environmentally significant network of waterways.

It’s Hot in Brisbane but it’s Coolangatta was recorded in 1953 by singer Gwen Ryan, accompanied by Claude Carnell’s Orchestra with Doug Roughton’s Hokey Pokey Club on vocals as well.

We can only imagine that it was a tourism promotion of some kind. Carnell was a venue operator and band leader on the Gold Coast from the ’50s through to the late ’70s, but it is the only recording we know of by Gwen Ryan.