WE DIDN’T WANT to go. The Gold Coast was a place for holidays, not living. Annual baths of intense bone-warming sunshine had been enough for even the coldest of my acquaintance.

I loved Queensland, but I had never been a big fan of Surfers – or ‘Sufferers’ Paradise’ as Dad used to call it in the ’60s. I had been resident for several weeks in 1981 while making a movie called Goodbye Paradise and had recorded my observations for the Sydney Morning Herald. During the filming, I lived in a glamorous new high-rise right on the sand. By early afternoon the shadow thrown by my building plunged the pale cream sand into deep blue shadow.