Moving to Gold Coast

Health & the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct

Gold Coast University Hospital, Griffith University, Gold Coast Private, Cohort Innovation Space

The Parklands precinct at Southport pairs a 750-bed tertiary hospital with a university campus and a commercial innovation building on the light rail line. Health is the largest professional employer on the coast, sits on every skilled occupation list, and is one of the few local sectors where a migrant's qualifications translate directly.

Construction & property development

Sunland, Meriton, Hutchinson Builders, Mirvac, Sarazin

Population growth plus a high-rise coastline makes construction the coast's economic engine and its most cyclical industry. Trades and project professionals are in constant demand, and the Coomera Connector and light rail Stage 3 have kept the pipeline full through the mid-2020s.

Tourism, events & hospitality

Village Roadshow Theme Parks, The Star Gold Coast, Dreamworld, Experience Co

Around ten million visitors a year underwrite an enormous hospitality sector. Good for finding work quickly on arrival, difficult to build a skilled-migration case on — most hospitality occupations sit outside the standard skilled lists.

Film & screen production

Village Roadshow Studios (Oxenford), Screen Queensland, Warner Bros. productions

Australia's largest privately owned studio complex sits at Oxenford and has carried major US productions for three decades, which is why the coast is occasionally called Aussiewood. Crew work is project-based and feast-or-famine, but the depth of the local crew base is real.

Marine & superyachts

Riviera, Maritimo, Gold Coast City Marina and Shipyard, Rivergate

The Coomera River corridor is the largest marine manufacturing and refit cluster in the southern hemisphere. Boatbuilding, composites, marine electrical and refit trades are a genuinely specialised local labour market most arrivals never hear about.

Education & research

Griffith University, Bond University, Southern Cross University (Coolangatta), TAFE Queensland

Bond at Robina was Australia's first private university and runs an accelerated three-semester year. Griffith's Gold Coast campus anchors the health precinct. Universities do not require security clearances or citizenship, which makes them a reliable first landing.

Nature · Central-southern coast

A world-class right-hand point break wrapping around a rainforest headland, with a beach, a walking track and the coast's best café strip behind it.

Local tip: Do the Oceanview walk around the headland at first light — it is twenty minutes, it is free, and the whale sightings between June and October are from the path rather than a boat. The break itself is for experienced surfers only; the beach north of it is where you actually swim, between the flags.

Nature · Currumbin Valley, 20 minutes inland from the beach

Fresh-water rock pools in a creek valley behind the coast, with rainforest, waterfalls and no development.

Local tip: Go on a weekday morning — the car park fills by nine on weekends and the parking enforcement is real. Ten minutes further up the valley the crowds vanish entirely. This is the standard local answer to a 34°C day when the surf is blown out.

Nature · Hinterland, 45 minutes south-west

A World Heritage remnant of ancient Gondwanan rainforest on a plateau, with Purling Brook Falls, the Natural Bridge and the glow worms inside it.

Local tip: The Natural Bridge glow worm colony is best on a moonless night, and you must not use a torch or a phone screen inside the cave — the light kills the display for everyone. Drive up in the afternoon, walk the falls circuit first, and let the temperature drop ten degrees on the way.

Landmark · Northern end of the beach strip

A long sand spit between the ocean and the Broadwater, with the Seaway walls, Doug Jennings Park and the last undeveloped stretch of the beachfront.

Local tip: The Seaway wall is where locals go to watch the surf on a big swell and where the sand back-passing pipeline pumps sand south to Surfers. Federation Walk Coastal Reserve behind it is the only piece of natural coastal bushland left on the strip and almost nobody uses it.

Food · Central coast, on the light rail corridor

A converted warehouse street-food market with live music, in the middle of the coast's best run of small bars, bakeries and restaurants.

Local tip: Marketta is the obvious answer and it is genuinely good, but the strip either side of it is the point — Nobby Beach and North Burleigh have the coast's densest concentration of places locals eat. It is also where the light rail extension changes the calculation on living without a car.

Landmark · Southern end, on the NSW border

Snapper Rocks, the Superbank, the Captain Cook Memorial on the state line, and two beach towns that are legally in different states and, for five months a year, different hours.

Local tip: Stand at Point Danger with one foot in each state — the border marker is right there — and note that between October and April your phone may change time as you walk. Rainbow Bay is the calmest swimming beach on the coast, and Greenmount hill at sunset is where locals go and tourists do not.