We're all going

By the 1950s, South Stradbroke Island was home to only two remaining industries: sandmining and holiday-making (which is what tourism was called back when anyone was allowed to do it). Families picnicked on beaches within cooee of huge mobile processors that stripped the dunes from north to south. The scars of that excavation are still visible today, and continue to harm the dune formations. From 1971, restoration efforts–started by the mining companies–have helped to restabilise the island.

You could argue that Couran Cove was a holiday destination for Aborigine for thousands of years before Europeans started offering 'pleasure trips' in 1897. In modern times, before Couran Cove Resort was built, several other attempts were made to develop the area more conventionally. At one point in the 1950s, plans were drawn up to put a bridge across from the mainland and turn South Stradbroke into a suburb of the Gold Coast. The land was to be cleared and replanted with imported grass and trees.

Ironically, this wholesale environmental destruction was prevented by the sandmining companies who weren't prepared to give up their beach-stripping profits.