The Gold Coast, 22 miles of surf beach looked after by 22 surf life savers clubs, each club assigned its own mile of beach. Our skate today was meeting at the Kurrawa SLSC, right in the middle of Broadbeach, named after the Aboriginal word for Blue Sea by its inaugural president and founding member Mr Harry Weimer in 1958.

With a 10am start and having left Brisbane at 8:30am, I was sure I would have time to spare. What I hadn’t taken into consideration was just how busy the traffic was around Surfers Paradise. With perfectly clear blue skies, the gentlest of breezes and the mercury nudging 30 degrees, people were heading to the beach in droves. As I crawled through yet another set of traffic lights, it was starting to dawn on me that an hour and a half was going to be pushing it.

With a customary couple of minutes to spare, I pulled into the car park and quickly realized that the chances of finding a parking spot were somewhere in the region of zero to none. I set off down the road and after what seemed like a couple of kilometres, the first signs of a parking spot emerged. As I swung the car in, I noticed Lyndal pull up a couple of spaces along. Feeling better that I was not the only one cutting it a bit fine, I quickly set about putting my skates on. As I locked the car, Lyndal appeared and we skated over to the meeting point by the path just outside the SLSC.

The Gold Coast Day is normally a very popular skate. With its combination of flat paths, seaside location, ice cream stop and dinner afterwards you can usually guarantee that the turn out will be pretty impressive. For some reason today was going to be that ever present exception to the rule. With Monte leading the tour and assistance from Lyndal, Vaughan and Justine, there were only twelve of us all up.

As we waited to see if anyone else was going to turn up, Monte was running an impromptu skate fix session and was busily removing rivets from anyone’s skates who’d let him. As people skated back and forth with looks of extreme concentration on their faces trying to decide if the sudden lack of stiffness in their boots was a good or bad thing, Monte declared that no one else was coming and it was time to set off.

After a short section of path, we transferred to a bike path that runs along a section of road. With numerous little side streets running off to the beach, mine and Andy's trainee marshal services were called upon to help block off the streets. Starting from the front of the group, each of the marshals would, in turn, take a street and watch as everyone went trough. As Monte brought up the rear, he would wave us on and we would then race back to the front. With a lot of little streets, this made for quite an energetic run along the length of the bike path.

As we reached the end of the road, the first stop of the day loomed into view. This was a corner shop that also happened to sell bacon and egg sandwiches. Having forgone breakfast, the smell of cooking bacon was too good to resist and I joined Monte and Andy in the ordering of a cooked snack. For food cooked on a hot plate in the corner of a news agents shop, it was surprisingly tasty and was quickly consumed as we continued to skate along the smooth concrete path that ran alongside the beach.

This path also ended fairly quickly as we reached the bottom of the steps that lead up to the top of South Nobby and our chance to partake in some high speed downhill grass skating. As we climbed the steep steps to the top, the best line of the day had to be awarded to the man coming down carrying a push bike. With a cheery smile, he said, “they give you one of these when you get to the top”!

As we gathered at the top of the hill, first timers looked down with some trepidation as Lyndal launched herself off and headed for the bottom. As Monte began to explain the technique for downhill grass skating, I walked out to the middle and set off down. Although the grass was dry and the ground was reasonably hard, it wasn’t that fast for some reason and it was no problem coming to a halt before hitting the path at the bottom.

More speed was going to require more elevation and I decided to give it a go from nearer the top (something I had not tried before). I trudged back up and launched off from much higher up. There was a definite speed increase, but still not anything too adrenalin inducing. Okay, time to stop messing about, this time I was going as high as I could. I passed the previous start point and carried on climbing. I finally got as far as I could and turned round. The view to the bottom was obscured by trees and the hill was pretty steep up here, but the only way was down. I pushed forward and began my descent. Things got a bit wobbly about half way but a bit of wild arm swinging sorted that out and a long sweeping turn at the bottom scrubbed off enough speed to avoid the path. I fancied another go, but the thought of having to climb back to the top was off putting enough to decide I had had enough. With everyone else gathered at the bottom of the hill, we elected instead for a group photo by the newly switched on fountain. On the last few skates here, this had been turned off to preserve water. The recent rains must have caused this decision to have been reversed and it made a nice backdrop for the picture.

The final outbound leg of the skate was to Cold Rock and the ever welcome boost of ice cream. I have written before about the rough nature of some of the Gold Coasts paths. This final leg is a perfect example of the horrible stone chip in concrete type of path that numbs your feet and blurs your vision. Aware of this, Monte elected to skate this section on the road and thus save our toes from an extreme massage. On the smooth tarmac of the road, the distance was covered quickly and before we knew it we were gathered outside Cold Rock enjoying ice creams, mile shakes and in Vaughan’s case an uber-banana split.

Dairy based snack products consumed and suitably rested, we reversed our course and began making our way back. Passing the packed beach we once more hit the road before ascending South Nobby one last time. At the bottom of the stairs on the other side, the path was coated with a fine dusting of sand. This made an excellent low friction surface to practise power sliding and lead by Lyndal a few of us gave it a go, however with time pushing on, we had to make tracks in order to get back to the surf life savers club in time for a late lunch.

We arrived back at Kurrawa just after 1:30pm and one quick change later, we all signed in and made our way up to the dining area. After securing a table we ordered our food and sat back to wait for it to arrive. Monte and Vaughan disappeared off for a couple of minutes and returned clutching a Keno ticket. As they watched the games tick by, Andy was becoming increasingly agitated as he watched various members of the club staff carry plates of food to other people’s tables. Each new plate of food he spied was now accompanied by wild table number waving in a vain attempt to speed up the delivery of his order. When everyone on the other side of the table (who had been given a different table number) got there food, his hunger bourn frustration was only further exacerbated. Finally our food arrived and he was quickly placated as he tucked into an enormous portion of calamari and chips.

With dinner finished and the last of the Keno games revealing a bounty of five dollars for Monte and Vaughan, people began to make their way home after a relatively gentle but fun days sk8ing.