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Chapter Three - Representations of Surfers Paradise

This is the "Real" City! Is this the "Real" City?

A cornucopia of display became the iconography of entertainment. (Chaney 1990:52)

We can never reach the points of the compass; and so no doubt we shall never live in utopia; but without the magnetic needle we should not be able to travel intelligently at all. (Mumford 1962:24)

If you want the Total Experience here is a hint... (Sunmap advertisement in Wot's On the Gold Coast 1993:4)

The claimed "reality" of the geographic and demographic representations of a city is an attempt to legitimise these images over other ideational forms. Like other ideational forms with which they compete for legitimation, the geographic and demographic representations can only be a summation of the conditions of a city. The claim over "reality" that these representations have is tempered by their attempts to present all of the city in an encapsulated statistical package 3. Other representations, which do not claim to be "reality," do not attempt such totalising projects. The hegemonic groups which maintain an interest in the individual postmodern city utilise the geographic and demographic, in conjunction with other images, in the constant construction of new representations.

Many cities exist which could be described as "postmodern." They are distinguished by the ability of an individual imbued with the sociality of advanced capitalist urban life to create an image of the city without entering and viewing it physically. Many of these are described as "world cities" - London, Paris, New York and, possibly, Tokyo and are de facto postmodern by virtue of their large size, historicity and their position as the centres for the hegemonic concentration of power. Other cities support the tenets of postmodernity through their relative newness expressed as a form of ahistoricity, the prominence of entertainment opportunities and, more generally, consumption opportunities within the city - a widely "read" representation with international provenance, and a concern with all forms of style (Andersen 1994:44, Tafuri 1976:22). This description encompasses cities such as Las Vegas, Atlantic City, The Cote D'azur, Osaka, nineteenth century Blackpool and the Gold Coast and pseudo-cities such as the Disney complexes in the United States and Europe. Other cities parallel these postmodern cities, sharing many of these features, particularly newness. They are generally the pre-planned national capitals such as Canberra, Washington or Brasilia. These cities are, however, antithetical to the tenets of postmodernism and lack a significant feature in their planned achievement - adhocism. The adhocism of the postmodern city, even the intentional form of Disneyland, is not the result of continual land re-usage which is found in the "world cities," but rather the outcome of accelerated development in the absence of coercive social restraints such as rigid town planning or consensual agreement in an atmosphere of demand driven economic competition (Jones 1986:62).

The postmodern cities, as unmappable sites of multiple representations, extend their dominion beyond physical boundaries. The "city limits" lie indistinctly between those people who maintain an ideational concept of the city and those that resist the pervasiveness of the city's available representations. Discussion of a site of consumption opportunity such as Surfers Paradise becomes a wide-ranging debate when all the holders of a representation of Surfers are considered. These people are all, to varying degrees, participants in the ongoing re-construction of the ideational city. Modelling a city, unbound from the physical, stresses its utopic aspects. This is achieved by eliminating its "geographical distance [and] reproduc[ing] distance internally as spectacular separation" (DeBord 1977:167). The geographical representation, viewed with the aid of ideationally constructed delimiting lines of a map, allows for a logical narrowing of the total material, which, while inopportune, is necessary for the production of a readable text (Rodman 1992:650). The utilisation of this approach necessitates a privileging of the geographic representations of the city as the indices for wider discussion. This reconciling of the unmappable to the mapped has previously been used similarly by Soja (1992) in his description of Los Angeles (281).

Various representations construct the Gold Coast in narrower bounded terms, shaping the entire region as a peripheral extension of the Surfers Paradise strip. The singular exception to this bias which has any level of wider currency is the civic vision propagated by the Gold Coast City Council. The representations which are both more persuasive and more excessive are those that reify the two central blocks of Surfers Paradise bounded by the Gold Coast Highway, the Esplanade, Cavill Mall (Avenue) and Elkhorn Avenue. This area is described by Brown as the potential site for a Central Entertainment District (Brown, D. 1992:3). The success of these representations has already, however, forced similar excesses and vision to stretch outward from this relatively small area towards the Broadbeach shopping mall - Pacific Fair - which has received a new facade, composed of gaudily painted concrete bricks, in recognition of the Surfers Paradise symbolic and representational spillage. Its new slogan, "experience a spectacular world of holiday shopping," makes no attempt to hide these intentions (PointOut 1994:8). This is also the location of Jupiters Casino - completing the recreational possibilities along the entertainment-"reality" continuum. The points of interest along this continuum are manufactured sites of touristic consumption. Each site attempts to reconstruct, for the purposes of entertainment and leisure, a new "reality" in which fictional allusions transport the consumer into a participatory world shaped primarily by the site's operators and the tourist's expectations. This continuum is the nucleus for the creation of tourist representations of the Gold Coast and has a physical existence in the shape of the Gold Coast Highway. The major Gold Coast entertainment opportunities are concentrated around this narrow strip where, as a consequence of the intense competition for consumer attention and the juxtapositioning of different physical symbols of the Gold Coast experience, the boundaries between "reality" and fantasy are obscured (Mullins 1990:332). The continuum can be "read" as the totality of the Gold Coast experience. This permits a situation to arise in which "the spatial juxtaposition of fragments can produce a representational understanding of the world" (Donato 1979:223). This narrowed representation of the built environment stresses the visible symbols of "real" culture, the city's architecture. This "real" culture, however cannot be confused with the daily life of the Gold Coast when "wise locals keep away from the sea and treat the Surfers Paradise strip as a sort of Las Vegas no-go area" (Jones 1986:5). The Gold Coast City Council has ensured the maintenance of this isolated tourism enclave by zoning large portions of central Surfers Paradise for comprehensive development, requiring that all new building and any alterations to the current land use are individually considered. These restrictions reconfirm Mumford's assertion that we can never live in Utopia (Mumford 1962:24). It may, however, be possible to visit - with many of the participants of Surfers Paradise's social life being numerically interchangeable tourists. This is a result of the council's zoning, adding to the perception of a cultural and architectural melange. This on-the-ground situation echoes Klotz's multi-vocal and plural postmodernism (Klotz 1988:421). The monolithic and modernist presentation of consumption opportunities is non-existent in such a disparate place. The postmodern "spirit of irony" ensures that the components of the Surfers Paradise "experience" are linked only by a tenuous geographical association. Postmodernisation has allowed the manufacture of Surfers Paradise's consumption opportunities to encompass a broader set of meanings without any reference to a single dominant style.

The postmodern fascination for pastiche and packaging is fully explored in the Surfers Paradise strip. The low rise buildings that remain are generally retail or dining outlets - in the broadest sense. Their shells do not deviate from the Queensland vernacular architecture of the 1930's to 1960's. Rather, it is the use of the buildings as billboards that contribute to the air of beach-side excitement. It is also this use of the building's facades, dominated by temporary sales tickets, that provoke the criticism that Surfers Paradise looks like Miami (Florida) or Honolulu (Bentley, 1993:W4, Brown, D. 1990:2). Ironically, one of the southern beaches of the Gold Coast is known as Miami, which is, despite an only cursory resemblance to the Florida City, perhaps the incomplete imitation of a preconceived representation undertaken by a pro-American developer. Recent criticism, however, suggests the look is more reminiscent of a neo-Tokyo, a result of the proliferation of Kanji ideographs used by shops and restaurants. Such criticisms are largely founded upon media images of America and Japan. Surfers can never, however, be Miami (Florida) or neo-Tokyo. It is, intentionally or unintentionally a parody of these images that has developed into new representations that stand solely to signify "Surfers Paradise." Those buildings which succeeded from the Miami Beach phase, a form to which many commercial fronts still adhere, parallel the developments experienced in Las Vegas. Venturi claimed that "the most unique, most monumental parts of the Strip, the signs and casino facades, are also the most interchangeable; it is the neutral, systems-motel structures behind that survive a succession of facelifts and a series of themes up front" (Venturi et al. 1972:32). Seafood restaurants constructed in the shape of a trawler, a motel with intentionally and artfully ruined walls and trilithon entranceways to shopping centres are all visible on the entertainment-"reality" continuum. On this continuum, the meaning of the message which may be obscure or unfathomable, is, however, irrelevant. The apparent existence of a message, any message, is of primary importance. The impetus of architecture has been altered in the face of social change, so that to "the bare realisation of the demands of utility are added 'border-violating' contents, which lifts architecture out of its primary subservience to function and which use it as a medium extending beyond functionality and serving to represent an 'imaginary world' - that is, as a means of fiction" (Klotz 1988:128). The construction of an "imaginary world" is a part-way step towards a physical Utopia, an ideational creation which is realised as escapism for the tourist or consumer (Mumford 1962:19). This creation of a fictional place, in its descent towards obscurity on the Surfers strip, has become self-referential (DeBord 1977:13, Smart 1990:405). The readings of a ruined motel or trilithon gateway are bound to the entertainment-"reality" continuum, in part, because they would not have been conceived for more mundane locations. Their actual presence, however, reinforces the non-mundane and apparently utopic aspects of the continuum.

The most prominent self-referential architectural symbols of the Surfers Paradise strip are the high rises. These buildings are the focus for most of Surfers Paradise's non-pornographic, tourist-orientated photographic images. They provide a frame for the beach and sea which remain barely visible between the gaps in the built environment (see Fig.2). This ordering of the environment may be intentional as "the architect is an organiser, not a designer of objects," who attempts to hide the buildings' recurrent rectilinear theme (Tafuri 1976:125). Everything else in relation to these symbols is reduced to minuscule scale - suggesting the buildings to be not entirely of human hands, but rather, an integral part of the natural environment. This condition echoes Tafuri's suggestion that, "the city, inasmuch as it is a work of men [sic], tends to a natural condition" (Tafuri 1976:6). As a part of nature, the rows of skyscrapers are legitimated as objects worthy of a tourist's gaze and become the justifying raison d'etre for the physical site of settlement (cf. Mullins 1990:332). The scale and similarity of linear form also invoke an order of placelessness, detaching the buildings from any identifiable location, providing a familiar McDonalds-like degree of safety for the tourist accustomed to urban life (Frampton 1983:26, Zukin 1988:437). The placelessness of high rise design confirms a common feature of imagined utopias - the uniformity of the provided accommodation (Eliav-Feldon 1982:35, Lewis 1987:110, More 1978:60).

The significance of the high rise within representations of the Surfers strip also confirms Venturi's observation that, "when Modern architects righteously abandoned ornament on buildings, they unconsciously designed buildings that were ornaments" (Venturi et al 1976:109). These high-rises are ornaments solely because of their monumental scale, but their initial adoption was one of expedience. More people can be accommodated in high rises closer to the beach with views of the water and charged higher rates for the privilege than is possible in hut-style resorts. These considerations for the tourist's pleasure were offset by the economic periods when the cost of building up undercut the cost of building along. Venturi has conflated utilitarian function with a sparse geometric style and identified it as ornamental. Economic considerations would, however, suggest that finished utilitarian boxes are a cheaper construction method than decorated and facaded buildings - the primary concern of real estate developers (Frampton 1983:17). Venturi's ambiguous charge that a building constructed as an ornament is modernist could be applied to a trawler-shaped seafood restaurant. The direct linkage of the symbolic trawler to the site's function of selling seafood is both a modernist and postmodern construction. The function is obvious - not requiring any leap of logic to "read" the site - as a functional modernist image. The incongruity of a ship surrounded by accommodation provides a physical "reality" to an ideational representation. The consumer/spectator is detached from the surrounding landscape within a fictional simulacrum of adventurous self-sufficiency which requires them to wrest food from the sea with the trawler as their only safety in a hostile environment. The postmodern interpretation may be overstated here but either "reading" is not incompatible in a postmodern landscape which permits the coexistence of ornament and utility (Zukin 1988:433).

The transmogrification of the Pacific Fair shopping mall, however, from a utilitarian building to a postmodern pavilion surrounded by ornament, suggests that architectural structures, like their social counterparts, are not - pardon the pun - "fixed in concrete." Pacific Fair is not the only site to change architectural camps and portends a wider ranging process of postmodernisation for the entire entertainment-"reality" continuum. The centrally located Paradise Centre is currently (early 1994) redeveloping its food court which previously suggeste suited to the process of architectural postmodernisation. The cavernous concrete spaces and straight lines merely require decoration in an effort to erode the primacy of function (Lagopoulos 1993:260). This cynical exploitation of changing consumption/spectatorship patterns is accommodatible to economic rationalist agendas when decoration can take the form of monumental three-dimensional logotypes or fibreglass symbols of the available services (Baudrillard 1983:129). This process of postmodernisation also lends a new and unintended material culture meaning to the observation that, "the logic of consumption can be defined as the manipulation of signs" (Baudrillard 1990:80).

Trophies for the Gazing Consumer.

The resort landscape has a distinctive look, it is full of special objects. (Clay 1973:124)

Doth pleasure please? Then place thee here, and well thee rest;
Most pleasant pleasures thou shalt find here.
Doth profit ease? Then here arrive, this isle is best.
For passing profits do here appear. (Gerard Noviomage of Utopia, More 1978:141)

Seeing is believing, step into an unbelievable world! (Ripley's Believe it, or Not advertisement in the Gold Coast publication Wot's On the Gold Coast 1993:4)

The material items of Surfers Paradise are the legitimating stuff of its representations. The ideational world is projected towards "reality" as "objects can help to make autonomous forces out of ideas by remaining in the physical environment long after their production" (Mukerji 1983:15). Material items provide an ideational concept with physicality and function as icons for the closure of a representation with the placement of the subject's gaze upon the object. The immovable material culture of Surfers is complemented by a plethora of items specifically produced for their portability. The boundary-crossing activities of tourists demand physical items which can reconfirm their escape from "ordinary" social life. These souvenirs of the site - which bear its name - reinforce specific representations of Surfers which allow the tourist to "prove" their visit to Utopia.

The material items that compose the competing representations of Surfers Paradise can, potentially, be ordered in a Linnean-style hierarchy (Donato 1979:226). However, one item is primary over all the other available items - the name. The names of both the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise anchor representations and material culture items to a specific historic and geographic provenance unique from all other sites of representational reproduction. The name of a site cannot be personally "possessed" as an item of material culture. The social meanings that a name imparts upon a physical object, however, confirm its primary importance as an item of ideational material culture. In exceptional circumstances, it is only the name that provides an anchorage for the representation, such as a "Greetings from Surfers Paradise" postcard that depicts groups of anonymous people on an equally anonymous beach (see Fig.3). Hegemonic groups play a role in the creation and usage of these items of material culture, when "the act of naming [is] an important strategy of groups engaged in struggles with other groups; the use of new terms by outsider groups who have an interest in destabilising existing symbolic hierarchies to produce a reclassification of the field more in line with their own interests" (Featherstone 1988:206). Names serve both as icons for the historical distillation of ongoing hegemonic competition and as privileging devices for specific - in this case, geographic - representations.

The name, "Surfers Paradise," without an apostrophe, implies an entertainment precinct radiating out from the sea; as Banham (1971) observes, "to produce Paradise you have to add water" (31). The name, however, is a misnomer when applied to an unpredictable beach with rips and undertows (McRobbie 1984:32). Surfers Paradise is the final manifestation of a political struggle between tourist operators and the Southport Council. The area was originally known to white settlers as Elston, after the maiden name of a Southport Postmaster's wife (McRobbie 1991:137). Various residents, including Jim Cavill, lobbied during the 1920's for the name to be changed to "Surfer's Paradise," (with an apostrophe) after a chance remark by an ill-informed surveyor. This movement was part of a larger impetus to establish a separate township. The Council resisted these actions - envisaging the area to eventually become an extension of the Southport precinct with the construction of a bridge. This justification was defeated by the political manoeuvring of residents who gained partial legitimation from the Postmaster General's office, with the creation of the Surfer's Paradise Post Office and the Education Department with the establishment of a school. The name was later changed, in the 1950's, to the less grammatical "Surfers Paradise" at a period when the area was attempting to establish an international reputation (McRobbie 1984:115).

The appellation of the "Gold Coast" to the entire region occurred after the establishment of the name "Surfers Paradise" during the 1950's. The name had been used by Brisbane journalists as an unveiled criticism of the apparent get-rich-quick attitude of local residents who profited from the increasing numbers of tourists and was specifically directed at the operators on the Surfers Paradise strip (McRobbie 1984:139). The "Gold Coast," in contrast to its former name of "South Coast," unbound the region from a cardinal topological relationship to Brisbane and the remainder of Queensland which was commensurate with efforts to create an international image for the region. Names along the strip are similarly tourist orientated and unattached to any references beyond the civic boundaries of the Gold Coast such as "Cavill Mall" or "Sir Bruce Small Park," or they are more generally resort orientated; "Paradise Island," "Australia Avenue," "Via Roma," "Monaco Street," "Orchid Avenue" or, the unfortunately named, "Hooker Boulevard" which honours the developer of the Japanese-orientated golf resort, Royal Pines. These names reflect those representations which confine experience to the immediately surrounding topology and history while remaining generic - unbound from specific social meaning other than the city's existence as a tourist destination.

Tourism has been variously described as a quest for authenticity or a gaze. Tourists choose their destination on the basis of pre-constructed representations that find solidity in brochures and advertisements. Their selection, while intellectualised and possibly romanticised as a quest, is based upon more mundane determinants such as their bounded rationality - where the tourist thinks they may experience a "good" holiday - and economic imperatives (DeBord 1977:168). This latter consideration, while obviously a consideration for most activities conducted in the urban social world, has an influence upon the provenance of material culture trophies and the representations of the destination which are reproduced. This is not to suggest that destinations are necessarily classed, but that a person or family of limited economic means will obtain souvenirs from a different range of places and items to those obtained by the more financial. The daytripper's selection of cheaper or "functional" souvenirs contrasts with the opal and sheepskin outlets which employ touts to specifically target the Japanese tourists. However, this economic and cultural hierarchy of experience is subverted, in part, by the availability of souvenirs from the intended destination at Japanese airports' departure lounges. The obtained objects of differing tourist experiences contribute to the images and concepts of the site that the tourist develops and reproduces for the consumption of inexperienced Others - the "victims" of holiday slide nights. People with less money cannot experience nightclubs that have high drink prices and door charges nor can they afford to gaze upon every theme park and tourist site when each visit involves the expenditure of considerable money. An exception to this exclusion from sites of excessive consumption along the entertainment-"reality" continuum is Jupiter's Casino which allows anyone, within the confines of a very liberal dress code, into the gaming room. While it may not be possible to participate in the exchange of $50 & $100 chips, gazing is definitely encouraged. The "gazer" is symbolically cordoned, however, with a velvet cord from the table. While this situation confirms the existe ho has no means of leaving.

Tourism, then, can only be a significant social concept and activity to those people with sufficient money, means, access to transport and leisure time to willingly displace themselves from their bounded social life for a period of time. Tourism is only available to those who are employed and unionised or receive an independent income - which arguably includes the Commonwealth unemployment benefit for those who live close to the site. This economic barrier encourages a hierarchy which requires a visitor or resident to hold sufficient finances and leisure time to gaze upon Surfers Paradise. However, one's relative proximity to the site reduces this barrier. International tourists must possess greater incomes to experience social Otherness than the resident of Brisbane who can make daytrips in a private car. This is acknowledged in the various representations of Surfers by contestant advertising which presents the city as both a family resort and a haven for the young - the ritualised "Schoolies Week" - in Brisbane, yet also an international resort of high-standing overseas (Brown, D. 1992:1). This apparent incompatibility is perhaps reconciled by the greater degree of Otherness experienced by the international tourist whose greater financial contribution provides them with more unusual objects to gaze upon (Harvey 1989:176). One of the regular focuses for the tourist's gaze within the beach resort and found in many of the representations of Surfers is the bikini.

Surfers' most persistent material culture representations incorporate the bikini. This item of material culture holds a privileged role as an icon of touristic promise and altered social codes. The bikini is given ultimate hegemonic legitimation in Surfers in the form of the obtrusive meter maids. The use of the Meter Maids continued the conflict over hegemonic control between the Council, who introduced the parking meters, and the local traders who funded the Meter Maids to place a coin in the expired meters of cars with interstate number plates. The international publicity that the Meter Maids received firmly tied the bikini and Surfers Paradise into a unified and identifiable representation (see Fig.4). This was reinforced by international tours of the Meter Maids, in their gold bikinis, to nations such as Canada and New Zealand. The use of the bikini was employed in a variety of other promotional gimmicks, such as the manner in which "Ted Louey proudly advertised Australia's first bikini car wash [during the 1950's]. He had no shortage of customers, nor of girls willing to work in their bikinis and slither over car bonnets with sponges and hose, providing a heart-stopping free show for passing males" (McRobbie 1991:116). The exploitation of women and their bodies as vehicles for commercial promotion imbues the development of the Surfers strip and the representation of its history in McRobbie's various works. This promotional use of the bikini dehumanises its wearer - utilising them as generic stuffing - and allowing the icon of the bikini to stand singly, untied to any person, but rather bound to capitalist imperatives of the resort (Pfohl 1990:427). This construction of the Other as a discontinuity composed of various erotic aspects, which is accentuated by the bikini, has been described as narcissistic perversion (Baudrillard 1990:53). McRobbie confirms this perspective in a more economistic tone, when he states that "most locals regarded [the 1950's] bikini publicity as the town's promotional mainstay. Certainly in winter...it was bikini girl shots from Surfers Paradise which provided warmth on page 3 of even sober journals like the Sydney Morning Herald or the Melbourne Age" (McRobbie 1984:137) and that "the bikini is undoubtedly the longest-lasting gimmick the Gold Coast has ever had" (McRobbie 1966:78). The bikini does not reaffirm the Surfers strips affinity with nature, in the manner of its high rise. In a physical sense it bounds and conceals, extending the set of objectified sexual organs to include their inanimate covering (Baudrillard 1990:53). Even the brevity of the costume while prominently revealing the wearer's gender can hold a more seductive meaning. "The direct sexual approach is too direct to be really genuine, because it instantly refers to something else" (Baudrillard 1990:157, cf. Derrida 1978:69). More's Utopians, however, used the exhibition of the body as a precursor to marriage when "a sad and an honest matron sheweth the woman, be she maid or widow, naked to the wooer" (More 1978:99).

The icon of the bikini, then, can hold meaning along a range of heterosexual male interpretations from subtle seduction to direct sexual availability (see Fig.5). Gazing upon bikinied and objectified Others reinforces the Surfers consumption experience for members of all genders regardless of sexual orientation. The supposed hegemonic dominance of white heterosexual males allows this form of Otherness to be perpetuated as a consequence of their economic importance within the Surfers strip. The bikini, and the gender of its wearers, reconfirms a generalised aspect of gazing within advanced capitalism - that the primary construction of gazes is for consumption by heterosexual males (Owens 1983:58, Pfohl 1990:426). Subverting this sexist hegemonic construction is, however, made complex by its perpetuation through the gazing consumer regardless of a woman's rationale for wearing a bikini.

A similar exploitive method of publicity was employed by Bernie Elsey - who developed the Meter Maid concept - to promote his hotel, The Beachcomber. For two years in the 1950's, he conducted weekly "Pyjama Parties" where hotel guests wore bedwear to a Sunday night party. The "Pyjama Party" itself did not attract attention until "Queensland Police Commissioner, Frank Bischof, took a personal interest in the pyjama parties and led what became a crusade against immorality, teenage drinking, pornography, vice, abortion and general loose living" (McRobbie 1991:80). The parties were continually raided by Brisbane police which attracted the attention of the media, including the new television stations, and, as a result, the public.

Other items of material culture, while attracting less direct publicity, both reinforce the icon of the bikini and the utopic representations of a paradise, albeit a supposedly surfer's paradise. The various tourist orientated free publications such as Wot's On the Gold Coast, This Week on the Gold Coast, PointOut Magazine, Look Today and Destination Surfers Paradise are all extended advertising brochures, which rely on the same group of advertisers for their income. Two of these magazines, This Week on the Gold Coast and Look Today are actually published by the same company extending market differentiation to an absurd extreme. On certain days in Surfers Paradise, the number of different available images of bikinied women in these magazines would outnumber the bikini wearers on the actual beach. The photography, the thinly veiled advertorials and the advertising copy all reconfirm the utopic representations of Surfers Paradise by stressing the multiplicity of hedonistic activities. Only the Gold Coast Sun attempts to present news of more interest to residents, but this is conditioned by the paper's format, which always includes a full-colour photograph of a bikini-clad woman on its front page. The Gold Coast Sun for 26th January 1994 juxtaposed the full colour photo of, "Super Girl - Lovely Melinda McKenzie [who] has every reason to smile..." with the headline "Sewage floods houses". This eclectic mix is continued through the paper, "Man with 'film star looks' may join race for top job," "Shed grant for school" and "Scenic route for giant charity bike ride" which is accompanied by a photograph of two unnamed bikini-clad women and a conservatively dressed middle aged white male all outfitted with bike helmets. While the Gold Coast's sanitation problems may be distressing to tourists it is freely available alongside the glossier advertising magazines providing a more parochial view of the city. These images potentially destroy the pre-arrival promise of Utopia. As Eliav-Feldon (1982) observes "a [Utopia] cannot be built without an effective sewage system" (31).

The complimentary detritus of Surfers Paradise tourism and its sometimes contradictory representations is shadowed by the plethora of souvenirs. These objects are intended to be individually purchased rather than distributed en masse. The souvenirs are the catalyst for a complex cross-cultural exchange, "clearly, one cannot sell ut Australia and many are produced in the same factories alongside "Greetings from Sydney" and "Greetings from Brisbane" items. In fact, a serendipitous visit to such a factory could provide the international tourist with all their mementos of an Australian holiday (cf. Horne 1993:10). The processes of production and distribution are irrelevant when considered in this context; it is the consumption of souvenirs that provide them with meaning. This value was recognised by More (1978), "But why shouldest thou not take even as much pleasure in beholding a counterfeit stone, which thine eye cannot discern from a right stone" (88)? The physical production of material items does not coincide with their representational production which occurs at an indefinite point upon the item's entry into the city it promotes (Harvey 1989:21). Curiously, the original purpose and meaning of many of these items are centred upon home-based hedonism, especially the consumption of beer. The utility of a beer bottle opener purchased by a person from a social environment that does not reify the consumption of beer must be marginal. However, as a trophy of consumption and an icon signifying the achievement of gazing upon difference, the beer bottle opener can impart new social qualities upon its holder. Baudrillard's analysis would consider this abstraction of meaning from function necessary. He suggests that objects must be incapable of function as this continued ability removes the item's relativity to the self as its possessor. The possession of functionality reduces the object to a tool (Baudrillard 1990:43). However, he neglects the souvenir's cultural function as a tool of tourism, an item of exchange and as a contribution to the possessor's identity (Bauman 1991:39). The status of an item as tool or object must be considered a relative phenomenon of social ascription and not simply a matter of objective definition. In a consumption orientated analysis, a methodology advocated by Baudrillard, the dynamic social meanings accorded to material culture items is of greater utility in social research than the production assigned purpose. The consumer, however, is actually fulfilling two social roles in their development of new interpretations for material culture items. The role of consumption in advanced capitalism has become an indication of one's preparedness to be a social participant. A social participant unwilling to act as a consumer - regardless of the form of consumption - is severely handicapped.

The businesses in the two central blocks of Surfers Paradise exploit the tourist's need to carry home prizes of their visit - to be both consumer and participant. This has been undertaken so thoroughly as to completely dominate central Surfers Paradise (Bentley 1993:W4). The spectacle of the tourist's gaze, then, is the businesses that will later sell proof that they have been gazed upon (cf. Brown, D. 1992:1). Public space, including the beach, is available not so much as a forum for social interchange, but as a means of providing a vista to these consumption opportunities (Baudrillard 1983:130). This is accentuated in the private enterprise atmosphere of Surfers Paradise where, "unlike Canberra or the State capitals, in Surfers practically no buildings were erected by local, State or Federal governments or by statutory bodies" (McRobbie 1984:47). Public space, beyond that of the roads and footpaths is provided at the discretion of the developers (Harvey 1989:186). A particular example of this public spirited largesse is the Esplanade. This important "cruising" route, between the Cavill Mall and Hanlan Street has never been declared a road by the City Council (see Fig.6). The titles, which extend to the beachfront, are currently bound to the multi-million dollar Paradise Centre development.

For the Japanese tourist, according to Graburn, the construction of the city as a space for consumption - as a souvenir emporium - is an appropriate development, reflecting the modes of reciprocal exchange involved in the process of gazing upon Otherness.

When a person or small group that is part of a larger group goes on a trip, at a farewell party they are given amounts of money as a farewell gift, the senbetsu, by those who are not travelling...At [tourist] sites the traveller must buy gifts to take back, omiyage, for each of those who gave senbetsu. (Graburn 1987:19)

Although Graburn is discussing domestic tourism, this reciprocation of gift-giving formalises the purposes for most tourists' visits. The experiences of tourism differentiate the Self from the Others of one's own "society" who have not undertaken the same consumption patterns (Mullins 1990:329).

What is paradise? And where is it? We have news for you. It exists only in travel agents' brochures. We dream of languid days and midnight romance. We experience airport delays and rude waiters. Anyone who has travelled - really travelled - knows that the crucial tenet is that you hate it. You despise every draining moment of it. Until it's over. Then you love it. Then you adore every revelatory encounter. (Collee 1994:W1)

Being at the destination is not the purpose of tourism. The important journey is the return home to recount the experiences with material item props obtained as proof and connecting the Self to the Other location. This narcissism, however deeply it is buried in claims of curiosity, education or exploration, is the essence of tourism and the intended, unspoken use for the beer bottle opener emblazoned with Surfers Paradise's name (cf. Craik 1993:3 & Craik 1991:50). Clammer (1992) stresses the social importance of consumption, "shopping is not merely the acquisition of things: it is the buying of identity" (195). The identity bought at a "different" location provides the consumer with the added benefit of privilege within a hegemonic competition maintained at an inter-personal level.

The material culture items of Surfers Paradise - those objects which maintain an existence separate from human imagination but have been given meaning - all contribute to the creation of representations. The portable items such as souvenirs, photography, the region's names and the history presented by McRobbie present images of a sub-tropical Utopia. Individually these images are competing economically; considered as a whole they fulfil the consumption opportunities of a postmodern landscape. The physical items of the city can also reflect more dystopic elements - graffiti, boarded-up buildings, sewage problems and eroded beachfront. These items reflect the inability of the hegemonic representation builders to either create a heterogenous social life or control natural phenomena. This dual dystopia is drawn together in the architectural icons of Surfers - the high rise. During the building boom of the early eighties a number of the high rises were built in below standard concrete thicknesses (Bentley 1993:W4). This has required some buildings to be constantly repaired since their "topping off" (Jones 1986:69). The representations of a sub-tropical Utopia can, apparently, only be found upon the surface. This superficiality, however, reflects the tourist's own cursory experience of the city.

Imagining Difference, Seeing Difference.

Just as the Gold Coast is the flagship for the Queensland tourist industry, Surfers Paradise is the Gold Coast's signature location. (Brown, D. 1992:2)

...it seldom chanceth that any stranger unless be he [sic] guided by an Utopian, can come into this haven, insomuch that they themselves could scarcely enter without jeopardy, but that their way is directed and ruled by certain landmarks standing on the shore. (More 1978:56)

When you say Queensland, don't you mean Surfers Paradise? You mean there's more to Queensland than just Surfers Paradise? (Brisbane News, 1994:3)

Material culture items, while they exist in the physical world beyond human imagination, are given their meaning in the ideational. Humans construct meaning for material culture items in a manner similar to the construction of concepts and beliefs. The utility of material culture items' lies in their ability to extend the range of concepts and representations beyond the horizon both temporally and physically to unencountered Others.

The use of material culture, when defined in its broadest sense, is the only means for the enterprise of inter-subjective communication. Spoken conversation, written documents, and broadcast and print media can all be considered material culture items as a result of their ability to be recorded, listened to, or read (cf. Said 1979a:165). They can be consumed by anyone with adequate access to the means of communication, education and social affiliation although the concepts and meanings the consumer attaches to these items will differ between individuals. If the convenience of universalism is momentarily used, this suggests an important role for material culture in inter-subjective understanding. The producer of material culture uses their pre-existent set of conceptualisations to imbue the constructed items with meaning. These embedded ideas are then re-interpreted by the consumer to impact upon their own set of conceptualisations. The producer is not, however, confined to the left-hand side of the equation as they are able to act simultaneously as a consumer (Said 1979a:172). Describing such a situation by reducing it to mechanistic formula removes its degrees of complexity. The process is being conducted continuously among all communicating humans, and the hegemonic institutions they represent, with varying elements and concepts being utilised. The different items of material culture that are created are related, undeterministically, to each other. The situation could be described as a complex form of dialecticism which relies upon an unspecific number of inputs that are synthesised into as many, if not more, outputs. The negotiation of these inputs to their possible outputs is mediated by the broadest category of material culture items including representations, concepts, discourses and physical items.

Representations that are propagated by the hegemonic institutions of Surfers, in the form of brochures and advertisements, intended for consumption prior to the physical experience shape the expectations of the tourist. The tourist's physical experience is, however, tainted by these implanted positive images which the site can rarely "realise." This cannot be considered a universal expectation of all tourists as, "advertising doesn't fool us: advertising is beyond true and the false" (Baudrillard 1990:93). As an aspect of hegemonic control which is positioned indeterminately between consent and coercion, these representations are not considered or available in isolation. Other destinations compete to present alternate utopias. The physical experiences of associates also allows the disappointment of a site to be reconciled as the tourist's inability to "have fun" or their incorrect selection of a destination, method of travel or choice of accommodation. The "perfect" holiday may be one that involves solely gazing upon material representations other than those of the physical city, living the experiences of the tourist but conducting the daily aspects of one's life "at home." These conditioned forms of escapism may explain the apparent popularity of television holiday programmes.

Representations of Surfers Paradise are signifiers for the entire entity (Urry 1990:137). The architectural vision is contained in the high rise and thematic buildings. Other constructions are based upon social fantasy. The image of Surfers as a sex capital has important ramifications for the activities of tourists and the residents. Urry suggests that part of the tourist's socially imbued imagination is the belief that conventional social relations are suspended in the destination (Craik 1991:25, Urry 1990:10). Surfers Paradise, in being constructed as utopic, hints at this absence of many social "norms." The belief that Surfers is different is so pervasive that it can impact upon the medical well-being of the Gold Coast's residents. A Courier Mail report suggests that visitors to the Gold Coast are offering sex workers on the Surfers strip more money for sex without condoms, a request which may eventually redefined who is recipient of the "Surfers experience" (Veitch 1994:5).

Tourist advertisements for the site suggest the contast availability of recreation opportunities and imply that the residents enjou an hedonistic lifestyle. Similarly, many of the photographic images used as tourist enticements for the city utilise a surplus of bikinied women for each male featured (see Fig.1.). This specific hedonism, if the real estate sales banter is believed, is financed by land sales. Surfers, and the entire Gold Coast, is intimated as being in a state of perpetual boom and a place to make "easy" money. The implications are unsubtle and misleading. McRobbie's histories perpetuate the urban myth of sexual availability; "Commercialisation of sex has never reached any great proportions on the Gold Coast possibly because there are so many happy amateurs, say the knowledgeable" (1966:177). The result of this image-making is a "community of strangers provid[ing]...anonymity for the criminal, and the 'tits and bums' so long associated with the Coast tourist publicity creates an expectation in the male visitor that can often only be fulfilled through force" (Jones 1986:7). This force is expressed violently, "Rosemary Kyburz, a [former] Liberal member of state parliament, claims that the Gold Coast is the State's rape capital. She has accused the Gold Coast tourist authorities of promoting an image that encourages sexual abuse such as rape" (Jones 1986:110). This is an image of the city ignored by the hegemonic institutions of the Gold Coast and certainly not one that appears on the promotional material in the form of a warning 4. This image of sexual freedom and availability is an image intended to appeal to men and permeates most of the representations of the Gold Coast and particularly the Surfers' strip. The suggestion of permanent availability coupled with the iconisation of the bikini positions women as humans subservient to the primary purposes of touristic promotion. McRobbie (1984), again, shapes the perspective, "perving at girls on the beach was as much an attraction then [in the 1880's] as it is today" (23).

This misogynistic view of women reflects a more pervasive conservatism. Turner and Ash (1976) suggest that this is a feature of many tourist resorts, "a reactionary government is, for a variety of reasons, usually favourable to the development of tourism" (169). The influence of the Queensland state governments of both the National and Labor parties has influenced the site's development and the manner that it is represented. During the 1950's, Surfers Paradise practised an almost permanent form of late night trading with some shops open into the early morning; the hotels remained open until 10 p.m. rather than 6 pm as in the southern states; and movie theatres opened on Sundays. This timelessness is a feature still found in postmodern tourist cities including Las Vegas (Andersen 1994:45). Alcohol was more freely available and cheaper than in southern states. For the tourists, many of whom in this period were from interstate rather than abroad, this lenience suggested stranger foreign locations, while the cheapness of the alcohol created the impression of a pseudo-duty free environment. The private enterprise nature of the city and its existence as an enclave, rather than an integral part of Queensland, permitted the government to ignore these transgressions and for the Gold Coast to develop as a major centre for Queensland laissez-faire conservatism. The government's attitude was probably softened by the licence fees from the Coast's hotels which paid some of the highest fees in the state, calculated as a percentage of gross sales. However, the Labor government's strict building regulations of the 1950's were the source of sufficient frustration to allow the Progress Association to consider seceding from Queensland and joining New South Wales. With their succession to power, the National Party state government legislated for more flexible building guidelines which encouraged the building boom that lasted until the 1980's and gave the Gold Coast its distinctive resort city architecture and social constructions (Craik 1991:195).

Surfers Paradise's role as a site for conservative governance is a contemporary reiteration of Mumford's suggestion that "far too large a number of classic utopias were based upon conceptions of authoritarian discipline" (Mumford 1962:4). Conservative political parties, as holders of hegemonic power, tolerate the existence of tourism enclaves which rely upon the presentation of spectacle. This allows the "reality" of daily life to be held against the pseudo-events, fiction and crime of the resort (Craik 1991:34). This differentiation of social life and experience reinforces their claims that "society" requires a unifying force, specifically a conservative government. An enclave of consumption also makes the government appear to be tolerant to those visiting international tourists while international business interests, which generally support laissez-faire conservatism, profit excessively. The National Party's government took this friendliness to its logical extreme by allowing large amounts of foreign investment in the Gold Coast region with all the major five star hotels along the Surfers strip being owned at some point by Japanese consortiums. The existence of freedom, to both choose and be unbound from social ties, is stressed in sites with the greatest hegemonic manipulation of representations. The complex simultaneous existence of freedom and control has authoritarian undertones. DeBord (1977) claims that "wherever the concentrated spectacle rules, so does the police" (64).

Surfers Paradise is summarised by a few typical attractions which have no logical relationship to each other beyond that of physical proximity (McDonough 1994:64). The act of gazing upon them satisfies the tourist's belief that they have "seen" Surfers (Rodman 1992:641). Proof of one's visit to each individual attraction is obtained photographically before being dislocated to another site (Bentley 1993:W1). This construction of Surfers Paradise is itself a result of the competitive free enterprise nature of the region. Larger attractions with more multi-national financial backing have come to replace the older more parochial and numerous attractions of the Surfers strip, such as "Santaland." The choice of which attractions to gaze upon is determined largely by tourist brochures and one's bounded rationality. Surfers, however, for the tourist informed by pre-existent representations, extends to the theme park sites such as Dreamworld and Movieworld and for some international tourists includes Brisbane as a suburban periphery of the Surfers experience. This reverses the perspective, which probably originated in Brisbane, that Surfers Paradise and the entire Gold Coast are an extension of Brisbane (Jones 1986:66). This summarisation of Surfers as a network of locations also impacts upon the Gold Coast region, as a whole. Attractions and points of interest are positioned in reference to the Surfers strip - how far they are from the entertainment-"reality" continuum, how long it takes to get there and how long it takes to gaze upon the attraction. The tourist is made constantly aware of their distance or proximity to the strip. Surfers Paradise's representational hegemony, however, prevails through its historical precedence, its central geographic position, and aided by the location of the major accommodation hotels along the strip.

These touristic excursions into a postmodern landscape are ostensibly individual (Mullins 1991:339). The tourist chooses or rejects visiting points of interest based upon their own interests, amount of time and knowledge of the region. Inter-subjective understanding is subjugated as a key factor in the manufacture of difference to be replaced by the physical impossibility of each tourist visiting each spectacle of the tourist's gaze simultaneously. This ad hoc freedom is illusory. The tourist, by becoming a tourist, makes themselves available to the seductive forces of social representations. The tourist's choice of one destination in preference to another is, in part, an acceptance that the advertised attractions will entice the tourist as consumer and social participant into their physical realm. This situation is secured with the tourist's arrival at the destination as the attractions are the only features which distinguish their visit from their daily urban life. Walking through the Cavill Mall is relatively mundane and a similar experience to any other city's mall, irrespective of its signs and architecture, unless you are walking through it with the express intention of gazing upon it and selecting from its proffered souvenirs (see Fig.7 & cf. Fig.8). Seeking attractions beyond those that are thoroughly listed in the Gold Coast's various free magazines is a futile activity - there are no more available. This is particularly the case when these tourist guides list the names of every high rise, every park, each individual advertiser's location, every shopping mall, the week's television viewing and the City Council's Administration Centre - which is unknown to many locals and tourist guides despite being less than two kilometres from Cavill Mall (see Fig.9).

Exploring the "real" Surfers Paradise and its Gold Coast periphery presents the tourist with a suburban sprawl not distantly removed from other Australian cities. A post-tourist may revel in this urban authenticity but for a tourist who is seeking difference, mundane mass housing may be a too real reminder of their own residential situation. Urban tourists do, however, expect an urban experience, "if the urbanite tourist does succeed in finding some remote palm-fringed beach, unspoilt, save for the unobtrusive 'no-higher-than-the-tallest-palm' hotel in which he [sic] is staying, he [sic] must frequently find the sun, sand and palm-fronds are not enough" (Turner & Ash 1976:168). The delimited parameters of the form the touristic experience of Surfers Paradise can assume as a result of gazing upon these attractions permits a general form of common experience to develop. These limits to the tourist's bounded rationality shape their description and reproduction of the city.

An important method of providing common experience, and consequent common representation, is the pseudo-event. These are spectacles designed specifically for the tourist's gaze and are planned to coincide with the tourist's expectations of the site. These events are conducted to a timetable and can have a restriction on the number of spectators at any one time. The tourist moving within a postmodern landscape, then, is regimented and handled as a mass tourist, part of an average group. This treatment could be regarded as a novel contrast to their supposed unscheduled freedom. The pseudo-event is not confined to the theme parks - which have perfected the enforcement of conformity within their postmodern landscapes with supposedly didactic rides and guided tours - but found more discretely throughout the resort city. These events include the opening and closing times of consumption and participatory opportunities such as the beach patrol times of the surf rescue. Pseudo-events are not, however, simply the juxtaposition of the "ordinary" activities of daily life with a strange place. Pseudo-events differ from events in being planned to be a spectacle by some form of hegemonic group. Events are more spontaneous, only being recognised as an "event" after it has occurred. Pseudo-events, then, rely upon a history of previous "events" to appeal to the consuming and participatory public. While pseudo-events can become events, this is a consequence of unplanned or unexpected activities. The "best" pseudo-events are manufactured by hegemonic groups vying for representational control of the city and are largely self-referential. Surfers Paradise, perhaps as a consequence of its already self-referential existence, is the host for pseudo-events that are both enacted on a massive scale and are part of broader contemporary Australian mythology. The annual schoolies' week marks the completion of secondary study. It is a consumption orientated pseudo-event which relies upon high school traditions and myths to attract new students each year. Its status as a pseudo-event has been reinforced by a growing number of returning ex-schoolies who are often in their second or third years of university study and for whom the risk of being caught as an underage drinker is non-existent as is the rationale for the celebration. Similarly, New Year's Eve festivities, a pseudo-event anywhere it is celebrated, is a marker for temporal progress. The association of participation and consumption as a single activity in advanced capitalism has allowed Surfers Paradise to be reified as one of the places to experiences the new year. This is the result of representations which imply the availability of unlimited consumption opportunities, including sex, at any time within the city. This consuming attraction may also be the rationale for Surfers Paradise's importance as a conference venue, when the content of the conference becomes subservient to the conference's location. The trivial pseudo-event, the 10 a.m. check out time for accommodation, while common to any resort orders the final acts of the tourist within the site. These events all structure the tourists' experience around significant times and events. Gazing upon a beach when it is being swept by City Council machinery, while an unique experience, destroys the representation of an idyllic utopic paradise - although it may confirm the existence of a more disciplined Utopia. The Surfers experience is a scheduled one that occurs within an imprecise set of boundaries.

The entertainment-"reality" continuum is not constructed solely as a physical barrier to the detached suburbs of the Gold Coast but holds temporal components as well. Within this environment ordered by significant times, the seasonal nature of the tourist resort assumes a major role in the constructions of representations of the city. This is one way in which Surfers Paradise can be made to assume multiple representations. Tourists escaping the Victorian winter do not encounter newly matriculated high school students, or tertiary students on extended February vacations.

The pseudo-event also plays a role in the daily lives of the residents. The economic importance of tourism for the Gold Coast region ensures that the anticipation, and arrival, of the tourist is a pseudo-event of significant proportions. The act of being seen or "promenading" at the beach and Cavill Mall on the Surfers strip is perhaps sufficiently different from the activities of the residents to herald the cessation of the tourist's personal role in the pseudo-event of anticipation and arrival. This pseudo-event recurs ad infinitum and extends to encompass boundary-crossing activities such as the resident-as-tourist. The postmodernity of Surfers does not, however, preclude the most refined form of modernist tourism from continuing - the package holiday. For these people the existence of the pseudo-event is almost obscured by the complete ordering of their vacation lives. The regularised totality of this experience overshadows the distinct events of different consumption opportunities. The boundaries and difference of social lives are not encountered but, rather, conveniently summarised as a brief photographic opportunity.

The difference that Surfers Paradise contains is based upon the preconceived representations of its tourists. Considering the difference of a resort city may actually require a consideration of the tourist's home city as a relationship of the mundane to the spectacular. Surfers Paradise could be considered the spectacular manifestation of Brisbane, the source of most of its tourists (Jones 1986:119). Tourists from other cities, however, must conceive Surfers in relationship to their own social boundaries and home city. Bringing their experience, as various ideational and material representations, to other residents of their home city alter further reproduction of Surfers to subsume components of both spectacular Surfers and a supposedly mundane Brisbane (see Fig.10). This interplay of constructions must further reinforce the spectacular and utopic parameters of Surfers and strengthen the mundane-ness of regions that are not Surfers (Craik 1991:2). This process of reconstruction allows the reinforcement of the belief that Surfers Paradise is a form of Utopia. This is a process undertaken within both the ideational and physical worlds and constructs the site in terms of a generalised Otherness to one's home (Miller 1990:478).

These representations and constructions of Surfers Paradise share hegemonic space by being made to direct their primary attention to a supposedly homogeneous object - the white, heterosexual male consumer of advanced capitalism. The plural postmodern landscape is focussed upon the provision of entertainment for this archetype necessitating Others to adopt a similar perspective or to derive enjoyment from unintended, and uncatered for, readings of the site. Economic explanations for the encouragement of this specific gaze devolve into a consideration of mass tourism and consumption techniques. Surfers is not, however, directly a site for mass tourism except at a level which quantifies the number of tourists to residents. The discontinuity of tourist experience to prior tourist representations is a result of alternate representations developed by, and for, Others.

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