Southport Suburb Review

Summary: The Gold Coast’s densest hub of non-tourism activity, Southport remains the closest thing the city has to a “CBD” – which, while it has grown quite a lot over time, still isn’t saying much by larger city standards. It now comes with additional public transport connectivity, and the government continues to lean into this CBD-centric nature for it even more.

Its central area is an active, bustling hub of shopping, restaurants and services as well as a handful of entertainment options which is almost eternally busy (especially at night), and has seen fairly significant development and population increases in recent years. While this area is convenient and provides almost every store and service one could want, it also suffers somewhat from crime & traffic issues and has degraded to a degree in this regard as time has gone on.

However, while most will judge Southport on this busy ‘hub’ area, there’s also much more to the suburb than that. This includes several higher-end pockets of low-density residential that provide pretty high-quality standards of living with far more peace & quiet. Although these days, you’ll be paying a fairly significant amount of money for the privilege of living in these nicer spots, especially for anything outside of an old house in need of renovations.

Key stats

Southport is a Gold Coast suburb that, perhaps more than any other, feels like it’s eternally within some kind of state of transition. It’s gone through several phases in its life cycle, and in the present day this continues to happen on an ongoing basis.

There’s always a continual aspect of renovation or new building of some kind going on here, as multiple attempts have taken place to ‘revitalise’ its central district and turn it into a true “CBD” that the Gold Coast has always lacked.

It’s also a place that can essentially be divided up into several fairly separate ‘sub-districts’ within the suburb that, contrary to popular perception, each offer clearly separate lifestyle aspects to choose from outside of just ‘mainstream central Southport’.

That’s because when most think of “Southport”, what they’re really envisioning is actually only its central shopping & retail hub area that physically only takes up about ~25% of the suburb’s actual geography. And, for those just visiting, fair enough; this amenity hub sandwiched between the Gold Coast Highway and High Street crams a lot of what draws people from elsewhere into Southport on a regular basis.

In addition, the suburb’s fairly-central location on the Gold Coast’s north/south axis means it’s not too far away for most people to visit, regardless of if they live on the northern or southern half of the city.

Due to where the suburb sits – especially given how far the borders of what we now call the ‘Gold Coast’ have continued to sprawl – it makes some sense choosing Southport as a central focal point of all this continued development. However this has and does also continue to cause some teething problems as the city’s population has continued to swell as well. Southport’s location also brings with it a mixture of positives and negatives.

On the one hand, its proximity to the waterfront allows it to provide access to an array of excellent seaside parkland & foreshore areas that rank as some of the most enjoyable public spots on the Gold Coast.

On the other, it also makes road access in and out of the suburb a chore, as either trying to head south via the Gold Coast Highway (and having to go through Surfers Paradise, Mermaid, Burleigh etc. if you’re heading south), or getting out towards the M1 highway in order to connect onto elsewhere (e.g: Brisbane or the southern end of the Gold Coast) adds an extra layer of terrible traffic on top of what is already a bad commuting experience by itself.

Central Southport’s roads are fairly tight and convoluted in general, with multiple narrow roundabouts and sudden two-to-one lane merges that catch many drivers unaware, while its criss-crossed arterial roads like Smith Street and Nerang Street are traffic jam magnets as well, particularly during peak driving hours.

This has been exacerbated in recent years by all the high-density residential development that has gone on in & around the suburb to add yet more cars to the road as well. As a result, commute times for many people in and out of Southport by car have nearly doubled in the span of just a few years.

One of the chief infrastructure improvements designed to assist with this – the addition of light rail connectivity to Southport & the construction of its station – has both helped & hurt with this in various ways. Ironically, the tram has had some slight negative affects in this regard, as it’s added an additional layer of disruption for road-based commuters, while population growth of people that actually use the tram has cancelled some of this out… so it’s been great for some & a detriment to others.

Central Southport also continues to ‘gouge’ you for parking when coming as a visitor; it’s rare to be able to find anywhere to park that isn’t paid metered parking, making you always feel like your enjoyment of the suburb is on a timer. It’s simply not viable for everyone to use the tram given it really only runs up & down the coast in a perpendicular line, as much as the government might like to act it is.

There have still been multiple beneficiaries of the addition of the tram line to Southport however. The light rail allows university students to commute to Griffith Uni (shout-out to my alma mater) within a short & painless ~10 minute journey; likewise for those who work at the Gold Coast Private and University Hospitals (key employers in the suburb).

It also provides a serviceable connection onto the heavy rail network (at Helensvale) which can then be used as a springboard to get elsewhere up or down the coast for work purposes.

Still, this is one of the few suburbs on the Gold Coast where you could actually theoretically live “car-free” and settle for say, an apartment without a car space in order to keep costs down – something you couldn’t really say about many other spots given the city’s heavily car-centric nature.

It likely wouldn’t be completely ideal, but would be doable, especially for university students in particular (who have been one of the key demographics propping up Southport’s economy in recent years). And especially because a large amount of Southport’s key amenties are mostly concentrated around this central district.

Much of central Southport is oriented around its major shopping centre Australia Fair – a longstanding (and formerly tired, but recently-renovated) shopping complex that provides all the major stores one could need for daily life. The mutli-level centre is vertically built over multiple floors rather than spread out like other more sprawling Gold Coast centres such as Pacific Fair or Robina Town Centre, and perpetually has cars queued up filing in & out of its relatively small carpark entrances.

Its main dining and smaller-scale retail district then sprawls out around the centre for several blocks, and offers quite a variety of (mostly casual or mid-level as opposed to higher-end) dining options, takeaway food joints, icecream stores, cafes & the like.

It’s had a small Chinatown built that officially opened back in 2015, and added a strip oriented around that culture and what it typically entails; think plenty of Asian restaurants of varying quality, bubble tea stores, Asian grocery stores, et al.

Southport’s central hub has a pretty extensive array of dining venues (again, mostly leaning Asian, but still varied enough) in general, and to its credit has dining spots to eat that are actually open until a relatively late hour – an increasing rarity in Australia these days. There’s some truly good-quality Asian food on offer in various spots here (Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Chinese in particular) that makes it worth a visit for dining alone, without blowing the budget too much as in some of the fancier areas of the Gold Coast.

This leads to an actually decently-buzzing nighttime scene on many nights that often feels less “desperate” than this area can sometimes do during the day, when some of its closed-down & empty storefronts look more prominent.

Coupled with some alright venues & pubs for actual live music – another increasingly rare thing on the Gold Coast – which should be appreciated for merely existing, and this is a suburb that at least offers some actual attempts at evening entertainment outside of nightclubs or gambling.

During the daytime, it can be a bit of a different story here. Southport still has a fairly high crime rate – again, mostly concentrated around this central district, although its neighbouring areas do experience some spill-over effect. This is as well as an ever-increasing number of homeless, rough sleepers and the odd group of junkies, often with mental health issues. They’re mostly harmless, but statistically it’s still something to be wary of.

A lot of this is due to concentrating a range of social & government services in central Southport all within a relatively close distance of one another. You’ve got the courthouse, Centrelink, mental health clinics, police station, mens’ halfway homes etc. all clustered here in close proximity.

It’s not being elitist to say that these attract certain demographics, and some (not all) of these demographics can make things unpleasant for random people for no real deserved reason. The tram has also contributed to this somewhat, as while it’s been a convenient addition for locals, it’s also increased accessibility to Southport from other lower-socio-economic areas elsewhere.

Much of this concentration of such ‘characters’ has also been diluted over time by the growing international student & ‘general local’ population presence, however. Southport is a suburb that’s quite focused around all-things-education in general; its central district has a TAFE campus, while various other niche training and education institutes also populate its various mid-rise buildings.

Elsewhere, it’s home to a fairly comprehensive school scene as well – both private and public. This ranges from $$-heavy private school options like TSS (The Southport School) with its ritzy waterfront campus and ample green spaces & sporting fields, through to solid state schooling options like Southport State & Keebra Park schools. Southport also offers a decent helping of childcare and early learning centres for those with younger children.

Families living in each of the various parts of Southport can enjoy both this education aspect and Southport’s many surprisingly-decent public parkland areas as well, as the suburb actually fares pretty well in this regard despite its otherwise sometimes-hectic nature.

Broadwater Parklands is legitimately one of the Gold Coast’s nicest foreshore parkland areas, and is both home to fairly regular events as well as simply being a nice place to walk on its footpaths while taking in water views. It also contains multiple big and small kids playgrounds and other little side-attractions, with plenty of equipment for the little ones to play on.

However, the crowding issues of the suburb are even impacting areas like this a bit these days, as parking is at a premium on busy days, kids have to fight for their share of time on the playground equipment, and the walking paths are busier than ever when the sun’s out. Overall though, its combination of waterfront views, ample playground equipment, BBQs, aquatic centres, drinking fountains, flat protected swimming areas, etc. makes for one of the city’s most enjoyable outdoor hubs.

The only real downside is, as with seemingly everywhere else nowadays, you get gouged in some way trying to enjoy it, with not-cheap metered parking pretty much required due to its popularity unless you’re coming in via public transport. Broadwater Parklands is basically ‘Peak Current Gold Coast’ – physically beautiful, but increasing amounts of money required in order to enjoy it.

Elsewhere, the massive Musgrave Park is a great, big, laid-back open area that is still fenced and ideal for dogs to go off-leash, full of big gum trees, equipped with bins and dog tidy bags & highly leafy in general. Its only major downside is it’s sometimes is left to get a bit overgrown, and that it gets pretty muddy after any solid amount of recent rainfall.

This carries over to Southport’s various other “pockets” of residential areas as well; pretty much all of Southport has at least one – or multiple – parks of varying size and quality within walking distance of most of that area’s homes.

And while not all of them may be spectacularly pretty, they’re all at least fairly roomy and offer playground equipment for the kids in some form.

Whether it’s parks in ritzier areas along the waterfront like JH Davies Park, those that mix in sporting fields like Arthur Angove Park, or even the smaller-ones interspersed along main arterial roads like Melrose Park, Southport still does ‘the park thing’ pretty damn well.

Add in Southport’s various other hubs of sporting fields, residential-adjacent reserves both large & small, and a couple of golf courses, and there’s a surprising amount of greenery still mixed in to a suburb that is otherwise fairly built-up.

Southport doesn’t really have a ‘beach-beach’ unless you count some tiny stretches of flat sand on the broadwater, but you’re so close to other beachy areas (Main Beach, Surfers Paradise, driving out to The Spit, etc.) it doesn’t really matter. In addition, this style of more ‘mild, wave-less beach’ can often be better for those with little kids anyway.

In terms of amenities, Southport is far more than just its Australia Fair-adjacent section too. This is one of the most well-equipped suburbs in the region, not only for shopping & services but for workers as well. There’s multiple complexes/hubs that offer both blue-collar & white-collar job opportunities, whether it’s industrial estates off Wardoo Street or service-based businesses along Ferry Road.

Ferry Road itself is a fairly hectic, traffic-heavy artery home to a wide mixture of car dealers, fast food restaurants, mixed standalone service and retail centres, as well as a handful of off-the-main-road little shopping centres.

This includes the new-ish and slick Brickworks complex, with its collection of modern cafes, furniture and variety stores and grocers including the semi-gourmet Ferry Market, and further down the road the more stock-standard but still useful Southport Park Shopping Centre.

This complex comes complete with all three major supermarket chains, and all the standard individual stores you’d expect from a decently-sized standard Aussie shopping centre (fruit and veg, smaller medical and dental, mixed smaller dining and cafes, clothes stores etc as well as the added bonus of a fairly rare Japanese grocery chain store).

Add in its newly-fairly-bougie modern cafe and dining strip around Musgrave Ave that’s been modernised alongside its already-existing older collection of roadside stores, and Southport has basically every major service or retailer represented here outside of all but luxury-type goods.

Property and streetscape-wise, Southport is again something of a tale of ‘many cities in one’ and contains several very distinct residential “districts” within its borders, each largely different to the other.

It’s undergone a ton of densification over the years and had continued new blocks of all levels of density added in amongst its older 70’s & 80’s style lowrise blocks, and now possesses one of the most diverse housing profiles of any suburb on the Gold Coast. Everything from enormous, multi-million-dollar waterfront mansions through to one-bedroom Meriton shoeboxes (and everything in between) is represented here, depending on what slice of the suburb you’re in.

Despite popular perception of Southport as a whole, there are several pockets of the suburb that border on the high-to-very-high-end of things; typically pretty much anything to the east of Ferry Road serves as the hypothetical wealth-dividing-line, which is typical of suburbs in which one section(s) of them possess closer proximity to the waterfront than the rest.

Here you’ll find slices where even the higher-density properties/apartments/villa & housing options are worth a pretty penny these days, let alone some of the extremely high-end houses that populate them.

What else would one expect with street names like Yacht or Skiff Street, or The Point/Avenue/Peninsular?

This pocket of the suburb is undeniably pretty, with its waterfront-adjacent nature combining with having its own little private stretch of sand on which to walk the dogs or enjoy the canal views.

Homes here typically go for prices in the multi-millions; weighing up the combination of their block sizes and architectural styles, it’s not hard to see why.

Elsewhere in the suburb’s north, one of the biggest and most obvious newer additions to Southport’s density has come courtesy of its continued denser housing developments around Griffith Uni and its pair of hospitals.

Much more modern – to the point that it feels like an entirely separate suburb in itself – this campus-like area that lies alongside busy Smith Street & Olsen Ave consists of a ton of larger, medium-density unit complexes designed to cater to uni students and local workers, along with several streets of ultra modern terrace-like narrow homes.

It’s an area that’s largely well-kept and pretty well-planned considering the standards of some other modern denser residential developments in Australia, with wide footpaths and pretty good tree cover despite its otherwise fairly cookie-cutter and “real-life Legoland” multi-coloured aesthetic.

It contains an expansive central parkland area with shade umbrellas and barbecue amenities as well as nice little flower gardens dotted throughout, and serves as a fairly decent example of modern higher density urban design with a definite ‘campus’ vibe, dotted with co-working spaces and the like.

It also backs on to Musgrave Park itself, and when combined with its Parkwood Sharks sporting fields and complex, balances out its apartment-heavy aspect with some decently accessible natural spots.

It’s busy here though due to all the density, and the high quantity of workers at both the (pretty huge) Gold Coast University Hospital complex and neighbouring Gold Coast Private Hospital, along with all the students.

As a result, the area is fairly tight for parking and has continual coming-and-goings of traffic, although there are some free parking spots available.

Amenity-wise, its Smith Collective & surrounds offer a decent mix, including Woolies/BWS, chemists, small eateries and other mixed services.

Another distinct pocket of Southport is its Sundale a.k.a “Meritonland” pocket and Retail Precinct adjacent to the Gold Coast Highway.

This is another more dense, self-contained section of higher density unit (or even closer to American “condo” style luxury units) and apartment living, both on the mid and higher ends of the budget spectrum, with a handful of boutique stores, restaurants (including the Southport location of the long-running Georges Paragon Seafood restaurant) and cafes, as well as its own Woolies Metro.

This has been built up alongside its existing streetscape of older homes of mostly low-and-mid-rise walkup unit blocks and smaller townhouse complexes, and ranks as one of the more affordable sections of the suburb for non-detached housing, with the occasional more modern block having also been added in over time.

Meanwhile, Southport’s ‘general’ older and lower-density residential sections exist in something closer to ‘mere-mortal’ bank account territory, although these days even these are getting up-there in price.

This is largely due to its residential streets typically having fairly large land block sizes, with land being the most significant component $-wise; and Southport’s sheer location makes land here fairly desirable by default.

These older areas consist mainly of lots of Queenslander-style homes that are either in original condition, or completely new homes built recently from scratch, without much in between.

There’s been a fair bit of knockdown-rebuild action – rather than sub-division – happening in these parts of Southport in recent years, and you can now find some truly higher-end homes in those spots. This ends up with the increasingly-frequent scenario of gorgeous modern (or well-maintained original) homes sitting alongside older neglected dumps which makes for an inconsistent streetscape.

This also makes for a pretty huge gap between these original-condition types of homes and anything that has been either modernised or outright rebuilt price-wise. When combined with all the various housing types elsewhere in the suburb, it makes the median house price figure in Southport – which currently sits at $1,000,000.00, or still slightly below the greater Gold Coast median price – somewhat deceptive.

This is because you can easily find properties either massively above (or massively below) that number depending on which part of the suburb you’re looking, as well as your living requirements & whether you’re willing to spend extra money to bring the house up to scratch.

Typically nowadays in terms of detached housing, anything under the median price will require pretty significant renovation, or be an older brick or fibro build in general; otherwise, expect to add a couple of hundred grand at least on top for something ready-made.

One of the nice things regardless of house choice though, as with most of the more established older suburbs on the Gold Coast, is that pretty much all of these older residential streets – even the “cheaper” ones – in Southport are quite green and have nice levels of tree cover.

Then of course, you have the centre of Southport itself as a potential living spot as well – which is mostly a concentration of towering modern highrise one-and-two-bedroom apartments, as well as multiple streets lined with older walk-up low-rise blocks that can sell for relatively cheap in others.

Add all of these together, and it sums up the extremely mixed bag of a suburb (and the potential for choice of living environments) all on offer all within a fairly close distance of one another. Southport may be many things, but lacking variety certainly isn’t one of them.

The Verdict

More than most other suburbs, Southport is hard to give a single overall “rating” to, seeing it’s basically a matter of choosing from one of 4 or 5 available lifestyles that just happen to be constrained by the suburb’s imaginary border that each offer very different qualities of life.

As a result, it can be a good place to live for very different groups of people in very different life circumstances and budget levels… and then not particularly great compared to some other Gold Coast suburbs for anyone else who falls outside those specific categories.

It’s hard to find a suburb on the Gold Coast with more “going on” than Southport, for both good and bad. It’s much more lively than many others, with a lot more to see and do, and can feel a little hectic as a result, as you’re never more than a few streets away from a busy arterial road even if you live in a quieter back street. Traffic here remains an increasingly-annoying issue given both Southport & the Gold Coast in general’s continued rapid population growth.

Southport’s simply a suburb that’s “used” by a lot of the Gold Coast on a regular basis, whether that be workers, shoppers, students or tourists. This means that if you like the concept of living in a suburb with more of a ‘buzz’, then you’ll be the type who will benefit the most from living here; if not, you’ll likely hate it.

As with any CBD-esque suburb, crime does remain somewhat of an issue, although as mentioned this is mostly limited to its central area and is mostly usually more of the ‘unpleasant misdemeanour’ type rather than anything truly serious.

As a place to live, it provides a ton of amenities at your fingertips, has a wide range of housing options and a broad demographic mix as a result.

Pretty much all of: cashed-up retirees (bigger detached home or higher-end unit, close proximity to medical services & waterfront/golf), university students (renting a smaller apartment, handy transport to uni), mid-level professionals (townhouse/villa/unit complex, or older house, close to working hubs/Brisbane connectivity) and various other people could find a reason to pick Southport… as long as you’re going to make full use of its facilities/services/amenities on a regular basis. If not, then you might as well live somewhere else quieter or cheaper, and simply travel in to visit Southport as needed.

Also, while it feels like something that could have been said of central Southport for 10 or 15 years now, the future of Southport has potential. It’s the one card-carrying suburb that down the track could form a true base for actual, regular, non-nightclub nightlife on the Gold Coast if it’s properly executed – it just needs to be managed right. And, as always as we know with government planning, that could go either way.