Don’t let development kill N. Shore paradise
As an Australian who has grown up on the world-renowned Gold Coast, I have seen firsthand what rampant development and pro-developer local authorities can do to devastate a beautiful area, stretch infrastructure to the breaking point and, despite all precautions and attempts at protection, environmentally wreck an area and burden, not benefit, local residents with poorly controlled growth.
I was a resident of Surfers Paradise for 15 years from 1973, and my mother and many friends still live there. Brisbane is only 45 minutes by car north of the Gold Coast, and I still go there frequently for weekends and holidays. At 35 years of age, I am far from a crotchety old fart who yearns for some long-forgotten ideal age that can never be reclaimed. I am a young father of three who has seen the spread of tourism and unit developments eat up the beauty of the Gold Coast from Surfers Paradise to Coolangatta.
The North Shore of Oahu is a truly amazing place, and I say this as someone who was warned that Hawaii would just feel like Surfers Paradise to me. Waikiki does to a certain degree, but the North Shore is truly unique. Despite its world fame, it is a place that is totally unimpressed with itself, still true in its core to the surfers who made it famous.
I recently watched a documentary called "Riding Giants," and the views of Waikiki in the 1950s and '60s compared with now reminded me so strongly of a similar transition in Surfers Paradise that it saddened me. Surfers Paradise is worse if anything, but the rampant development and the environmental "compromises" that inevitably accompany it have spread south and north like a cancer. In stark relief, the footage showing the North Shore revealed what as locals you all know: The North Shore 50 years on is still quite recognizable; its essential quality has not changed.
When I first saw the North Shore myself and experienced the ambience, I felt the place resonate with me like few places in the world ever have, other than myown. It will take courage and fortitude to protect the North Shore from the cleverly crafted PR and spin doctoring of hungry developers who see only dollar signs and view empty or low-density waterfront land as a license to print money. They are expert at convincing local and state authorities that they have the community's best interests at heart, that they want to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and some of that might even be true but it is purely incidental to them, never even close to what is claimed -- and at what price? At what price to a unique part of the world and its culture?
Surfers Paradise is still a great place, don't get me wrong, but you already have Waikiki. For the long-term benefit of Oahu, if you don't have the North Shore to provide a counterpoint and a balance, you become just another overdeveloped island in the Pacific, and there are plenty of those. If the local authorities won't listen to "preservation" arguments, then listen to economic ones -- there are plenty of bustling, tourist-driven islands in the Pacific and elsewhere, and there are plenty of places with unspoiled beauty, including in your neighbor islands (although they are fast becoming five-star resorts "in tune with nature") -- what Oahu has is a unique competitive advantage over other places in the balanced combination of places like Waikiki and Diamond Head with the laid-back, local hangout feel of the North Shore, quietly and humbly sitting on a massive, worldwide reputation as the greatest surfing spot on the planet. If you pander to developers and cattle-truck tourism to make the North Shore more "user friendly" and tourist-defined luxurious (with lip service to environmental "partnerships" or not), you will effectively be cutting off your nose to spite your face and Oahu WILL lose the advantage it has at the moment due to its balance and range of feels and places.
Karl Scott lives in Hamilton, Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia.