Palm Beach, by the people who live here

The advantage of staying on Jefferson Lane with children is that the day can start slowly. The sand is at the end of the lawn, so a morning is possible without packing a car: buckets, a shade tent, and the patrolled flags at Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club, about 150 metres to the right along the sand.

When the surf is up and the beach is too rough for small children, Tallebudgera Creek is five minutes north. The creek mouth is calm, shallow for a long way out, and the water is clear enough to see your feet. There is grass, shade and a kiosk on the Palm Beach side, and the sandbank on the far bank is a short paddle for confident swimmers.

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is around the corner — barely five minutes down the road — and worth a full day rather than a quick visit. The lorikeet feeding happens morning and late afternoon, and the sanctuary's wildlife hospital, train and treetop ropes course fill the time between. Buying tickets online in advance usually saves both money and the queue.

The beachfront path is the other thing families use without thinking about it. It runs the length of Palm Beach, flat and sealed, and it works for scooters, prams and learner bike riders. Heading north it reaches the mouth of Tallebudgera Creek in about twenty-five minutes on foot; south it runs through to Currumbin. Laguna Park, a few minutes along, has a playground, a skate bowl and shade, and it sits directly on the path so nobody has to cross a road to get there.

For a change of pace, the Pines Elanora shopping centre has a cinema ten minutes inland, and Currumbin RSL has a children's play area and reliable meals if nobody wants to cook. Closer to the house, the skate park and playground at Laguna Park in Palm Beach sits right on the beachfront path.

Rainy days are the reason the house has a fireplace, a lift and enough living space to spread out. Failing that, the Gold Coast's larger attractions — the theme parks north of Surfers Paradise — are a 35 to 45 minute drive and best treated as a planned outing rather than a spontaneous one.

Wet weather is worth planning for rather than improvising. The cinema at Pines Elanora is the obvious one, and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary stays open in rain with a good deal of it under cover. Closer to home, the house has a fireplace, a lift and enough separate living areas that a family of eight is not stuck in one room. The garage takes three cars, which matters more than it sounds when everyone arrives with boards, bikes and prams.

Practical note: the beach in front of the house is unpatrolled. The nearest flagged swimming is at Palm Beach SLSC, 150 metres to the right, and Tallebudgera Creek is the safest option for young children.

Palm Beach has quietly become one of the better places to eat on the Gold Coast, largely because it never tried to be. The strip along the Gold Coast Highway between Nineteenth and Twenty-Sixth Avenue carries most of it, and almost all of it is walkable from the house.

Mornings are the suburb's strength. There is a dense run of cafés within a few minutes' walk doing proper coffee, and the routine most guests settle into is a walk along the beachfront path, coffee at the highway end, and back along the sand. Bakeries in the area sell out of the good things by mid-morning, so an early start pays.

For lunch, the surf club is the reliable option, and at 150 metres along the sand you can walk to it barefoot: unfussy food, cold beer, and a deck that looks straight down the beach. It is the kind of place that works for a large group with children and nobody minds sandy feet.

Between breakfast and dinner, the highway strip carries bakeries, a couple of good sandwich shops and takeaway that is a step above what the beach usually offers. If you are heading to the creek or the beach for the day, it is easier to pick up lunch on the way than to come back for it. Most places here open early and close by mid-afternoon — Palm Beach is a morning suburb.

For dinner, the surf club deserves more credit than it gets. It is 150 metres along the sand, the flags out front are patrolled through the day, and the deck looks straight down the beach — the easiest meal of your stay, with no car and no booking.

Dinner is where Palm Beach has changed most. The strip now carries small-plate restaurants, wine bars, pizza, Japanese and Italian within a few hundred metres of each other, and the standard is high enough that booking on a Friday or Saturday is sensible rather than optional.

If you want to go further, Burleigh Heads is ten minutes north and James Street is the southern Gold Coast's busiest eating precinct. Book well ahead there — the well-known rooms fill weeks out in summer. South, Currumbin and Coolangatta have their own smaller strips, and the RSLs at both are consistently good value.

A rough rule for planning: breakfast and coffee in Palm Beach, lunch wherever the day has taken you, and dinner booked. The southern Gold Coast has more good rooms than it has seats, and walk-ins on a weekend evening in summer generally end in a longer drive than anyone wanted. Midweek is a different story and worth taking advantage of if your stay allows it.

For cooking in: there are supermarkets on the highway within a two minute walk, and the Palm Beach farmers' market runs on weekend mornings nearby. The kitchen and the outdoor terrace are set up for a long table.

Friday evening. Arrive, unpack, and do nothing further than the terrace. If you have landed at Coolangatta the drive is about ten minutes, which means dinner in Palm Beach is realistic even on a late flight. Light the firepit; the sea breeze drops after sunset.

Saturday morning. Walk the beach south towards Currumbin while the light is low, then coffee on the highway. If the swell is small, this is the morning to swim out front. If it is not, drive five minutes to Tallebudgera Creek and swim there instead.

Saturday afternoon. North to Burleigh Heads. The national park headland track is a forty-minute loop with views back along the coast, and the point break below it is one of the best things to watch on the eastern seaboard. Finish on the grass at Justins Park.

Saturday evening. Dinner on James Street in Burleigh, or back in Palm Beach if you would rather walk than drive.

If the group would rather stay in, this is the night for the firepit and the long table on the terrace. The supermarkets are two minutes' walk, the kitchen is set up for cooking for eight, and the sound of the surf does most of the work.

Sunday morning. South to Coolangatta. Rainbow Bay and Greenmount are sheltered and good for a swim, and the walk around the headland to Snapper Rocks takes twenty minutes. Breakfast in Coolangatta, then cross the border into Tweed Heads for the Point Danger lookout.

Sunday afternoon. Either the hinterland or the house. Currumbin Valley and the Tweed caldera are forty minutes inland, with rainforest walks and swimming holes, and the drive itself is the attraction. Alternatively, stay put: the sauna, the steam shower and the lawn are the reason most guests book.

If it rains, invert the plan. Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and the cinema at Pines Elanora absorb a wet morning, and the hinterland is arguably better in low cloud than in full sun — the caldera rim disappears and reappears, and the rainforest walks are cooler. The drive through Currumbin Valley is worth doing in any weather.

Sunday evening. A last swim, an early dinner in Palm Beach, and the ten minute run to the airport if you are flying out. Guests on a longer stay tend to find that the second weekend needs no plan at all.

Plan around the tide rather than the clock. Low tide opens up the walk south to Currumbin along hard sand; high tide is better for swimming at the creek.

Tallebudgera Creek runs out of the hinterland and meets the ocean between Palm Beach and Burleigh, and the last few hundred metres of it are the best swimming on the southern Gold Coast. The water is clear, the bottom is sand, and there is no surf.

The Palm Beach side, off Tallebudgera Creek Road, has grass, shade, picnic tables, toilets and a kiosk, and it is about five minutes from the house. The Burleigh side is reached through the Burleigh Head National Park car park and is quieter but has less shade. Both sides look onto the same stretch of water.

Time your visit with the tide. The incoming tide brings clear ocean water up the creek and is when the water looks its best; the outgoing tide runs hard through the mouth and is not the time to let children drift. A tide app is worth ten seconds of your morning.

Facilities on the Palm Beach side are genuinely good: toilets and change rooms, barbecues, picnic tables under the trees, and a kiosk through the warmer months. There is a large car park, and it is free — which is the reason it fills. The grass runs right to the water, so a shade tent and a picnic rug is a realistic setup for a whole day rather than a quick swim.

There is a sandbank in the middle of the creek that emerges at low tide and becomes the gathering point for everyone with a paddleboard. Board and kayak hire operates from the creek in the warmer months, and the flat water makes it a genuinely easy first paddle.

For a walk, the path along the creek connects through to the Burleigh Head National Park track, which climbs the headland through pandanus and rainforest and comes out above the point. It is one of the few places on the coast where you get rainforest, creek and surf within a kilometre.

The creek changes through the year. Summer is warm and busy, and the water clarity depends on how much rain has come out of the hinterland in the previous week — after heavy rain the creek runs brown for a few days and the ocean end is the better swim. Winter is cooler but clearer and almost empty, and the middle of the day is comfortable enough for most people. Marine stingers are not a concern this far south, but the usual advice about swimming near the mouth on a running tide applies year-round.

Weekends and school holidays fill the car park by mid-morning. Arrive before nine or after three, or walk the twenty-five minutes north along the beach from the house instead.

Palm Beach is a beach break, which means it changes with the sandbanks and the swell rather than staying the same year-round. The advantage of staying on the sand is that you can look at it from the lawn before deciding whether to bother.

Out front, the artificial reef off Nineteenth Avenue has reshaped the banks in recent years and the stretch between there and the surf club picks up most swell directions. It works best on a smaller swell with light offshore wind in the morning. On a big south swell it closes out, and that is the day to drive.

Currumbin Alley, a few minutes south, is the obvious alternative and the best beginner wave on this part of the coast: a long, gentle right that breaks over sand at the mouth of Currumbin Creek. It gets crowded for exactly that reason, and the inside section is where learners should stay.

Wind matters more here than swell size. A west or south-west wind holds the faces up along this whole stretch and is why everyone surfs early; by mid-morning in summer the north-easter usually arrives and flattens everything out. A small, clean swell with a light offshore beats a big messy one at every one of these breaks.

Burleigh Heads, ten minutes north, is a serious wave. On a solid east or south-east swell the point produces long, hollow rights, and the lineup is competitive. Watch it from the headland before paddling out — it is not a wave to learn on, and the rocks at the top of the point are unforgiving.

Further south, Snapper Rocks, Rainbow Bay and Greenmount form the Superbank, one of the longest sand-bottom point breaks in the world. On the right swell it runs from Snapper through to Kirra. It is twelve minutes from the house and it is the reason people move here.

A rough progression if you are learning: start on the inside at Currumbin Alley on a small day, move to the banks out front at Palm Beach once you can turn, and leave Burleigh and Snapper until you are comfortable in a crowded lineup. The southern Gold Coast is a competitive place to surf and local etiquette is taken seriously — wait your turn, don't drop in, and you will be fine anywhere on this coast.

Board hire is available at Currumbin and Coolangatta, and there are surf schools at the Alley running group and private lessons most mornings.