Palm Beach, Queensland



Palm Beach is a suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, between Tallebudgera Creek and Currumbin Creek. At the 2006 Census, Palm Beach had a population of 13,494.

Palm Beach is an area with little in the way of natural features to enclose it or to set it apart from other places on the Gold Coast, though it has thrice been voted cleanest beach in Queensland. Certainly subdivided by the mid-1950s the subdivision is unusual in the way in which it straddles both sides of the highway. Streets along the highway are named from first to twenty-eighth starting at the southern end of the area and each second one terminates at the highway. Between the beach and the highway in the southern part of the area the narrow Jefferson Lane links across streets. In this lane are some of the earliest and most basic of Gold Coast beach "shacks", some on blocks of land valued in millions of dollars. There is some suggestion that these in fact predate the subdivision and other remnants of an earlier settlement.

Recent extensions of the Palm Beach area to the west have created new subdivisions with different characteristics including a small section of canal development. The area is bounded to the north by the Tallebudgera Creek and the national recreation camp and to the south by tower developments at the mouth of Currumbin Creek. The creek mouths of Tallebudgera and Currumbin have been stabilised with training walls built during the 1970s. Both of the Creek entrances are dredged on an annual basis. There are nearshore bait reefs along Palm Beach and offshore there are fishing reefs that are some of the most productive of the Gold Coast.

Laguna Lake is in the south western part of the suburb, with Elizabeth Slopper Gardens park around its edges. The Tallebudgera Creek Tourist Park, at the northern end of Palm Beach, provides holiday accommodation mainly for families. The adjacent Tallebudgera Recreational Camp is a national fitness camp visited by children from throughout Queensland. Neptune Royal Life Saving Club was the first female only club in Australia (often claimed as the world) and still provides patrol services for people swimming in Tallebudgera Creek estuary. It remains the only club on the Gold Coast not affiliated with Surf Life Saving.

Palm Beach is also patrolled by the Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club at 7th Avenue and Pacific Surf Life Saving Club near 19th Avenue.

Local sporting clubs include soccer club Palm Beach Sharks and Palm Beach Currumbin Australian Football Club.

The local high school is Palm Beach Currumbin High School.

Coastal management
Coastal management structures at Palm Beach include training walls at Currumbin and Tallebudgera Creek entrances and mini groynes at 11th and 21st Avenues. The Gold Coast Oceanway is of particular poor quality through Palm Beach due to the majority of the beachfront being effectively in private ownership. Recent loss of sand due to unusual weather and tidal patterns have caused some houses along the beachfront to lose their yards to the erosion.

Trivia

 * Palm Beach was judged Queensland's Cleanest Beach in 1999 and again in 2000 and 2011 by the Keep Australia Beautiful Council.
 * Extreme erosion along Palm Beach in 2011 revealed rusted car bodies, among other aged items, usually many meters below sand.