My City is a Whore

This was one of my favorite posts that I wanted to keep.

I've been inspired by one of my favorite artists (yet again) to write about my home town, the Gold Coast. Now some of you have had a little introduction to this town via my blog "you're being raped AND YOU LOVE IT." Where I began to describe what it feels like living in this cess pool. I only breached the surface in that blog though. And since most of you are too lazy to click my links I'll use part of what I wrote in that blog as an introduction of sorts...Hell, I just love that picture of the hep c infested...what the hell is that thing anyway??? Anyone? Buler?




The Gold Coast is possibly the most corrupt place in Australia. I'm talking silent crimes here. You won't hear about it on the news, but you'll feel it in every suburb when the street lights come on. You can walk down the street at night and feel safe but there is a definite uneasy feeling about how close the houses are to each other and the high voltage power lines. Its nothing particularly loud, though at times you will see its face. Especially in this generation coming up. They don't know it but they feel they're a legacy to something undefined, something sickly.

Growing up here was like watching Pamela Anderson's corpse decay. Parts of it remaining fresh, unchanged, a thousand year land mark to artificial beauty, other parts brown, rotting, maggots boring into the diseased flesh. So, being a Gold Coaster by birth has ingrained into me a certain type of ironic, warped sense of humour. People come here to live like beach bums and end up being corporate prostitutes. It makes me laugh anyhow.

Magic Mountain.
My first sense that there was something very wrong with this town was when I was very young. A theme park called magic mountain was the scene for my first nightmare. For those curious:

I dreamed that I was in the car park of magic mountain. It had been conquered by these massive spiders. If you've ever seen the dark crystal they were about that size. Anyhow, as I went in from the car park I saw them wrapping people up in web to save for later. I went into the arcade and that was all I could remember.

Garthim from the Dark Crystal.
Magic mountain was a great theme park. It was built on and around some headlands in a beach side suburb called "Nobby's Beach." On the opposite side of the same headlands there was a huge sign built into the ground that read "Hi Miami High." And this looked down onto the school's sports field.

There were a few rides, the little train, the ball pit, bouncy castle, a chair lift...not a whole lot there. But it was the theme that really made it fun. As you got off the chair lift there was a sword in a stone. And tourists would always line up and get a photo of themselves trying to pull the sword out. I did it a couple times. I found out the trick was that there was a button that you pressed with your foot to release the sword. Even as a kid I knew there was more to "magic" than magic.
There was also a sort of hall where they did magic shows and such. I got called up on stage as a volunteer once. Good times.

Magic mountain was not just a theme park. Most of the Gold Coasters who lived here while it was still open refer to the headlands as Magic Mountain and it has been some the theme park closed permanently. And before it closed down there were many rumors of satanic rituals. People reported seeing cats skinned and strung up from trees. Others reported trees with phallic shapes carved out of them that ..witches.. would impale themselves on. It didn't surprise me. I've often assumed that it was part of the reason that magic mountain shut down. Of course, its a bunch of units now.


The hole you can't get out of
This was often how we described good old Mudgeeraba. I used to go to school there. Its a nice looking suburb. In fact, it could easily be mistaken for a township rather than a suburb of the gold coast. Mudgeeraba is a lush, green one horse town to about 10 thousand people though it isn't nearly as bad as Springbrook which sits above it to the west and is a 0.2 horse town.

As a kid I used to spend many hours in mudgeeraba hanging out with my friends at the pool or at the cemetery so I feel as though this is almost a second home. It was where I had one of my most visual acid trips. Its also a lovely place to get molested.

Mudgeeraba Caravan Park is the stuff of legends. I had a friend who was a bit on the upper side of middle class. She said her father would take friends for tours around mudgeeraba caravan park. She said as a joke whenever her or her siblings were being a pain in the ass he'd threaten to drive her or her siblings out there and leave them there. Its a sort of lawless place, since the cops are too scared to go in there. Everyone owns a gun. There are the odd exceptions, which is usually where the trouble starts.

It takes all kinds though. The denizens are not just your average old coots and crack whores. Bikies, drug dealers, wifebeaters, psychopaths...Its a rich field of white trash variety. I'm just glad they're confined by distance.

Mudgeeraba cops are fun. One Halloween myself and a few friends were going to egg and toilet paper something...not exactly sure what. We got stopped by the cops.
"Whats in the bag?"
"Oh thats just some eggs and toilet paper. Mum asked us to pick some up while we were out trick or treating."
"Okay, you kids be careful."

Another time we had been drinking. The cops pulled up beside us and asked us where we were going. "We're just heading home."
"Have you been drinking?"
"NooOOoo!"
"Alright, you kids be careful."
It was probably the same fucking cop.


If you lived here you'd be as psychotic as me by now.
Varsity lakes as it is known today was the suburb I grew up in. I am surprised I survived. This place used to be called "Stephens." I'm not entirely sure why they had to rename it. Apparently the gold coast has around 22 new suburbs each year. At this there will be a Gold Coast suburb for each child in China by 2032. The name can be attributed to Bond University which is a few kilometers up the road. I was a bit disappointed as I was hoping they'd rename it "Dingleberry on Cerebus' asshole." But I guess thats a little long for postal addresses.

You guys think I'm kidding, but this is seriously one fucked up neighborhood. Oh sure, you can Google it now and see the urban sprawl behind the university and think "Oh I SEE! She's being clever and making a scathing comment about urbanization and suburbia har har har har...where's my beret?" But I am deadly serious. This place is the fucking epicenter of hell.



Naturally the Uni is rife with date rape and alcoholism, but isn't every university? No, I've seen some fucked up shit in my time here. Less than a hundred meters away from where I sit now a woman killed two of her small children by hanging them, then, after her third child escaped, she killed herself. The day after I noticed that on TV there was an Oprah special on post partem depression. The worst part of this was that all the neighbors tried to get a soundbite in for the news crews that reported it. They didn't even know her. Nobody did. That was probably why she did it. This was what inspired Jabberwocky: Life Like.


This place isn't quite as bad as the Mudgeeraba caravan park. Our drug dealers only wield machetes. There is a guy who deals drugs in my block. I have no idea what kind of drugs. One night he decided to start some shit with a neighbor. And he brought a machete. No one was injured but a few people missed a bit of sleep.

Its not all nutjobs and freaks though. One night after watching a cult movie and retiring to write 'damnation,' I was most disturbed by the rather loud music that pumped out from some unknown source. I went wandering. It really only sounded like it were across the road and I didn't see any drunken party guests stumbling home so I assumed that it was just a few people blaring music or maybe a band rehearsing.

I wandered further towards a nearby park. There is a community center there, lots of trees, not a lot of lighting. Thats never stopped me before though. Two figures in black were sitting down in the grass near the toilet block. I wandered over to them. It was a couple in their late 30s .. 40s. They were both wearing leather jackets, leather pants. Their Harley was parked some three meters away. I asked them about the music and if they knew anything about it. They said they didn't but that it was probably the biker's club having a party. They were rather polite and decided that I'd probably be better off writing than seeking out the source of the music (from memory it was gerling - a fine aussie band...not the sort of stuff you'd expect from bikies though.)

You see, there is a bikey club located in the industrial zone that completes the third of the sandwich that is Stephens. The bikers mostly don't cause a whole lot of trouble ..that being said I don't particularly want to dis them for fear of retribution. Heh. A few years back the cops raided them and found a stash of drugs and guns. But from what I can tell most people on the Gold Coast use drugs, be it of the prescription, legalized or illicit variety. Unfortunately caffeine is the only drug I use these days. Not that I wouldn't kill for a cigarette...

The face of tomorrow.
Schoolies week is something that happens here around this time every year. Surfer's paradise is the center of this phenomenon. You see, the Gold Coast being a den of inequity likes to ensnare the youth of other states; we like fresh meat. We have an infamous club scene here. I'm not sure why. The clubs are bullshit. I suppose it has more to do with the distribution of drugs and the blonde bitch on the door telling you that you're not good enough. It has that forbidden appeal. So the attractive kids go into clubs get drunk and date raped by the fat old retired tourists while the less attractive kids hang around Cavil Mall beating up other unattractive kids, buying drugs from mobile phone store clerks and being date raped by uni students from out of state. See, for the most part the kids who come to schoolies are well behaved, its the older students who want to maintain the dream by coming back every year and hanging around in the mall since the clubs won't let them in dressed in thongs and track pants, regardless of the brand or bling.


Surfer's Paradise is a dealer's best friend. From the impressionable teens that desparately want to own the town to the sharp pointy aerial of Q1 which, from a distance, looks like a massive hyperbolic needle. Of course drugs aren't the only wheels in motion in surfers there is also a thriving prostitution industry. Its legal...in brothels. But their business is really in the clubs and on the streets and in real estate. Did I mention the cost of living here?
Possibly the best thing about Surfer's is the bizarre sense of self it has. Raptis plaza has a statue of David and a Ripley's believe it or not under Raptis Plaza.




There used to be a sort of arcade/amusement center called Grundy's on one side of the mall. I think its now a disco bowling alley.

Underneath disco bowl and opposite the beach there is a surf-wear shop which has a set of jaws which probably should belong to a former Megaladon.



There was a suntan guy who used to spray suntan lotion on the beach who died of skin cancer a few years back. And another local celebrity that died a couple years ago was Big Kev. He was one of the old people at the clubs, only he paid before date raping girls...

* * *

Overall its not such a bad place to visit. We don't have a rich culture which makes it okay to cum and go as often as you please without actually contributing much more than a few bucks to foreign brewers. There are theme parks and amusements for the tourists. You won't be bored...



I've only touched very lightly on the topic here today. I may come back with some more pics later. I was VERY disappointed that I couldn't find any of Magic Mountain or the Megaladon Jaws. I know I have a few somewhere that I could scan. And I don't have any recent pics since my camera died. I may head out sometime later this week and snap a few though. This is probably the first of a few posts on this topic. Stay tuned kids!