Living in the Party Zone

The sounds of other people having fun is not that funny

Regular avalanches of glass bottles from the bar bin to the recycling bin accompany the sounds of other people having fun. In the high-rise heart of the Gold Coast, if I’m not wide awake already, the 5.00am collection round by the truck carting all that glass away will get me out of bed. Early morning is the best time of day on the beach anyway.

Living adjacent to Surfers Paradise’s party house area, of course I expect party noise. But cataclysmic eruptions can come without warning any time from any direction. An attention-seeking new night club announces its arrival by breaking the imaginary sound barrier between party zone and neighbourhood with amplifiers pounding the beat from its open deck. Engine-roar of motorcycles and automobiles shatters ear-drums. Exhausts crackle like rifle-reports tearing perforations in the night sky. Explosive bursts of fireworks punctuate nights. Every blast, boom and blare resounds like thunder off the tall tower walls and reverberates along the concrete and glass canyons. I’ve never been in an actual war-zone, but, it’s a war-zone out there!

Surfers Paradise is a child of the car culture so it’s no surprise that rip-roaring sprees like the Gold Coast 500 car race and the Pacific Airshow franchises have made their homes here. Organisers seem to have open passes to take over the place for weeks on end, dismantling citizens’ routines, closing streets and public spaces, taking out ‘nuisance’ trees, and bringing traffic to a crawl. The actual events produce uproarious din for days along with smokey clouds of malodorous octane emissions.

For some, the entertainment factor spills into everyday life. With outbreaks of spontaneous recklessness, or outright lawlessness, the pilots of all manner of air-borne, water-borne and land-cruising craft exercise their imaginary licences to flaunt the rules of the road or river, speed limits and sound barriers.

For a central neighbourhood with only one arterial running through it Surfers Paradise really punches above its weight for overwhelming traffic noise. Diesel utes make a big contribution. Traffic congestion is one thing – it is temporal and eventually passes, taking its noise with it. What is left is sheer noise for the sake of making noise. Traffic lights are the green flag for drag races. Wheel-standing motorbikes with whiny two-stroke engines and deep-throated wagons that belong on the Autobahn all give it a go. I kid you not. When four-cylinder ‘bombs’ accelerate, their raucous noise shatter the night and day. To be fair, the awful clang is not always the owner’s fault. Apparently there’s a racket in stolen catalytic converters in demand for their precious metals!!! The resultant noisy chaff-cutter makes an ironic addition to the addition of unsafe molecules to the air.

Come Thursday nights, the cult of the internal combustion engine (ICE) really revs up at the start of another four-night festival of fossil fuel. Drivers with money to burn, descend on the centre of Surfers to make aimless laps of the boulevards, wilfully burning petrol and rubber in the 40kph zone, screaming and rumbling their V8 jalopies. Recalcitrant rev-heads favour after dark and the dead of night to accelerate hard while standing still, for no apparent reason other than attention-seeking and annoying everyone else. Every hostile howl strafes the high rise towers that line the avenues. Saturday nights are peak for excess ICE noise. Yet even that can be outdone on Saturday nights on long weekends. A superlative adjective is yet to be invented for that level of madness.

Emergency! All is not well in the party zone.
Police, fire, and ambulance vehicles (mostly ambulances) are frequent fliers down Surfers Paradise’s boulevards. Fortunately (not really the right word) the shrill of siren noise is more likely to be intermittent rather than continuous. Often, ambulance drivers just use the flashing red and blue lights to alert traffic that they want to Get-Through-Now. They activate the sirens at intersections, or to budge a particularly inattentive driver who won’t Get-Out-Of-The-Way. Echoing off the buildings, the rising stridulous noise is strong and omni-directional. Only REALLY SERIOUS emergencies require the full effect of continuous blaring, that eventually penetrates to the truly confused, and to the dead asleep. Fire trucks’ heart-stopping hooters let you know they mean business.

The authorities regularly take to the sky in pursuit, or on other important search missions. A Pol-Air helicopter has been known to circle the high rise neighbourhood using the loudest loud hailer of all time to beseech the populace to assist them in locating certain missing persons. What an anxiety-inducing combination of noise and cognitive dissonance! Everyone looks skyward askance. The person in the blue jumper, are they missing or are they on the run? In danger or extremely dangerous? Helicopters are great for search and rescue but surely more suitable for ocean or bush operations than the central city? Must we emulate a strife-ridden mega-city like Sao Paolo for our law and order inspiration? Meanwhile, down on the street, police cars’ special Buzz Lightyear sound effect buttons stun offenders into obeisance. They definitely catch my attention hundreds of metres away.

All of this sounds drastic; but in reality, fun-loving Surfers Paradise is a pedestrian paradise. (That is if you squint your eyes and ignore the treeless and narrow, broken and disjointed footpaths and long detours around demolition and building construction sites that clearly take precedence over pathways for pedestrians to navigate the terrain safely).

Highly urban and overloaded with noisy machines it may be, but in terms of traffic numbers, most local streets in Surfers Paradise are quiet. People who live here, and those who come for holidays, recognise the enormous benefits of walking or cycling rather than driving and parking. They don’t drive in the local area because they don’t need to. Everything, even the party, is within walkable reach, from the river to the beach, shopping and medical services, having a night out, dining out, arts and cultural experiences, and the light rail line. The activity and mobility choices are wide. No-one wants to stop the fun but I can almost imagine a quieter life once everyone is driving electric vehicles or taking the bus!

The party, the beats and the bottle avalanches can and will go on without the ICE! With one exception. When it comes to the car culture, the sight of a procession of custom cars cruising majestically along the avenues always bring spontaneous outbreaks of smiling and laughing and friendly banter between motorists and crowds. May the artisanal enthusiasts of groups like the Impala Car Club ever be welcome. Their antics and the artistry of their art works on wheels are the only oversize vehicles that aren’t out of place. Anyway, even vintage cars can be electrified and keep their good looks.