Big and Beautiful

(Back Blip from my holiday in Australia in August)

We took a walk around Broadbeach before doing some shopping and going back to the apartment for a swim. I noticed this very large pink hibiscus, never seen one that big before.

Broadbeach is a suburb on the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia.
In 1934, the South Coast Bulletin announced a new seaside township had been surveyed fronting the Pacific Highway and adjoining Main Beach, about one mile south of Surfers Paradise.

The township had been appropriately named Broadbeach and the first section of the site had been surveyed into 70 allotments.

Back in the 19th century, at the junction of Little Tallebudgera Creek and the Nerang River, timber getter, Ned Harper established an assembly point for the cedar, beech, ash teak and mahogany logs which had been cut from the riverbanks upstream.

From the deep water frontage of Harpers Wharf, sailing vessels took aboard the roughly hewn timber destined for Sydney or Brisbane. Alternatively, the timber was rafted from here to Brisbane.

The Broadbeach sand dunes were also a strategically important resource during World War 2. Southport Minerals mined the mineral sand rutile from the leased reserves and exported the concentrated mineral overseas for the production of special alloy steels and welding equipment.

By the mid 1950s, mining had ceased, the dunes were reconstructed, planted with grasses and trees and the land auctioned for redevelopment.
For more information on Broadbeach.