COOLANGATTA, QUEENSLAND
An older and less upmarket area of the Gold Coast. The most southerly locality on the coast, it is a twin town with Tweed Heads, which is across the border in NSW. The Coolangatta airport, which serves the whole Gold Coast region, is located behind Bilinga Beach.
Location: 102 km south of Brisbane
Origin of name: derived from Coolangatta Creek, which was named around September 1883, because the schooner Coolangatta, owned by Alexander Berry (1781-1873) merchant and settler, Shoalhaven River area (NSW), was wrecked off the creek mouth on 18th August 1846. The Creek was probably named by surveyor Alexander Schneider, but the name originated in the Aboriginal "culingatty", or "koolangutta", Murrin-jari language, which identified a mountain near the entrance of the Shoalhaven River and after which Berry's schooner was named.
Brief history: The area was first settled by whites in the 1880s as a holiday village,. The arrival of the railway in 1903 aided the town's growth and attractiveness to Southerners to whom Coolangatta became 'the' place to visit for a sun-filled holiday. Coolangatta began and remains a holiday destination geared towards families rather than young people who are more attracted to the bright lights of Surfers and Southport.
Natural features: South Pacific Ocean; Coolangatta Beach; Snapper Rocks; Greenmount Beach; Rainbow Bay; Kirra Beach; Flat Rock Creek; North Kirra Beach; Tugun Beach; Bilinga Beach; Springbrook National Park (Mt. Cougal; Cougal's Cascades).
Built features: Coolangatta (Gold Coast) Airport; localities of Bilinga, Tugun and Currumbin; Point Danger lighthouse (the first lighthouse in the world to experiment with laser technology. The experiment was unsuccessful and it returned to conventional mechanicals); Currumbin Bird Sanctuary; Olson's Bird Gardens; Tandem Skydive.
Heritage features: Point Danger (named by Lieut. James Cook). A memorial to James Cook takes the form of a capstan moulded from cast-iron ballast jettisoned from the Endeavour and recovered in the 1960s.