One of the several places that marks the state border. This photo was taken in the 1980s complete from the Qld side into NSW with the Twin Towns Service Club. At that time Qld didn’t have gambling, so people had to cross the border to play the pokie machines.
My goodness, who could have predicted on January 1 what twists and turns 2020 would bring.
Here in Australia we spent December and January battling tremendous bushfires in all our states.
No sooner than the last of these had been extinguished, our nation – indeed the whole world – has been hit with a pandemic the likes of which haven’t been seen for 100 years.
The Gold Coast, the city where I live, is actually made up of a string of little coastal villages that grew together in the latter half of the 20th Century and the post WWII boom.
The southern most village Coolangatta (named for a shipwreck), sits right next another village called Tweed Heads in the state of New South Wales.
Coolangatta-Tweed is known as Twin Towns. Perhaps, more accurately, they would be cojoined twins because it is very nearly impossible to separate.
In some places, neighbours on opposite sides of the same street can be living in different states!
A town meeting with concerned locals. Queensland is on the left on the beach side. The gents on the footbridge straddle the border.
The South Coast railway was extended from Nerang railway station to Tweed Heads in New South Wales and opened on 10 August 1903. The terminus, Coolangatta railway station, was located to the south-west of the intersection of Griffith and Dutton Streets in Tweed Heads, resulting in a Queensland railway station being located in another state.
The railway guaranteed the success of Coolangatta as a holiday township and it flourished from that time forward.
Even now, the current Gold Coast Airport run way crosses the state border
But separate the two towns did in 1919 for the Spanish Flu pandemic.
The Queensland-New South Wales border was closed in January 1919 to stop the spread.
Being the height of summer many people holiday in the Coolangatta-Tweed region and they found themselves unable to return home to Queensland.
The quarantine camp to limit the spread of the Spanish Flu into Queensland. It might sound like a nice beach-side holiday but considering the concern about the pandemic, it was anything but. People had to stay there for two weeks before being allowed to travel further north.
A quarantine camp was set up on the Queensland side of the border at the beautiful Rainbow Bay. But unlike today, it was not 5-star hotels – it was tents on the shoreline.
Students in Coolangatta who would have walked across the border to attend school in New South Wales found themselves stranded. Hastily, a new school was established at Coolangatta.
The borders were reopened in May 1919 and had remained open until March 2020 with no end date announced.
In global terms, the influenza killed about 100 million people – more than had been killed during the First World War, but it was the economic catastrophe that lingered and can be argued as being one of the key factors than spurred the Second World War
An estimated 40% of the population of just over 5 million was infected. The death toll was estimated at 15,000 – 2.7% of the population, one of the lowest recorded of any country in the world.
A group of women cross the border from Tweed to Coolangatta, escorted by a policeman on horseback. They would be staying at the quarantine camp at Rainbow Bay, just over the border into Queensland.
At the time of writing, Australia’s population is 30 million and the COVID-19 death toll is less than 30.
Knowing that personal movement might soon be limited my husband and I took advantage of the beautiful national parks in our region.
There was one bushwalk that I don’t recall ever having taken. Twin Falls at Springbrook is the most beautiful place I have seen.
The Twin Falls are the major attraction. At the base is a place to swim and it’s popular with families. Those waterfalls are only part of the attraction. The 4km walk went over, through and around at least another six.
As part of program to better my health, we had been going to the beach more often and that is a pleasure that we’ll forego for now in favour of exploring places within walking distance.
However you’re spending your self-isolation, I hope you’re doing it well for your mental and physical health.
Coolangatta-Tweed as it is today. In the foreground with its lovely expanse of beach is Coolangatta, Queensland. Running down the centre of that peninsular is the New South Wales border. The river that opens out into the Pacific Ocean is the Tweed River in New South Wales.
