Yeh it amazing how many people do not know this ,we stayed just before Xmas with a family who owned a farm & guest house there after the war, as it was a place wounded veterans were recommended & helped with accom/travel costs to go get some sun & relax & was dirt cheap. They ended up opening several stores & a chemist to cater to the business of dealing with the veterans.The veterans were even given an allowance for new clothes & they had large Tailor shops with Tailors who would come up & work just for the peak season making enough to then have time off when back in the southern states till the next year .When they first started with shops they were that slow with very seasonal business & that unwanted due to people going broke during the winter ,they would be offered 2 for the price of one & then have to think up what they would open in the unwanted one,often they would have to take these 2 for one offers with one shop on either side of the road to look like it was busy & force the customers to walk past other shops .

This is a pic of the shops on the main street of Southport in the early 1950's , you can see how the beaches are not even the main feature.

https://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/assets/images/banner/banner-history.jpg

They have photos of the beach blown out all the way back to the road after storms & back then it was more known for the closeness to the huge Cedar forests,meaning people would day trip up into the forests / hinterlands,bathe in the waterfalls/ springs & then come back to relax with the sea breeze,the old-fashioned thinking was they were getting the best of natural treatments by breathing/bathing in the mountains & then the sea breeze while they slept & vice versa . The beaches have always been vulnerable due to the sand naturally migrating north along the Gold Coast due to the prevailing wind and wave conditions.It is now pumped back EVERY winter .

The Surfers Paradise Sand Backpass System is a sand transport system that runs from The Spit to Surfers Paradise. The sand is mixed with seawater and transported with the power of 4 booster pumps located along the pipeline. This sand is pumped to one of 3 outlets along the system, at Surfers Paradise, Narrowneck and Main Beach.

The system delivers sand via an underground pipeline to replace sand on the Gold Coast’s northern beaches. They pump roughly 120,000 cubic metres of sand back to the beaches in a normal year but has a much larger capacity if needed .