Hip Hood: Palm Beach, Queensland

There was a time when you would have had absolutely no reason to stop as you drove through Palm Beach. Sitting like the forgotten middle child between Coolangatta – on the Gold Coast’s southern border with New South Wales – and its hip older sister, Burleigh Heads to its north, Palm Beach was at one time known more for its needle exchange site than buzzing cafe scene. 

Straddling both sides of the Gold Coast highway with a numbered system of street names that’s more Santa Monica than Queensland, ‘Palmy’ as it’s affectionately known, was always a bit rough around the edges, even in the 1870s when the area was designated pastoral land.

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