Bombay Rock. The Playroom. Shed 5. Troccadero. Shark Bar.
If these words mean nothing to the majority of readers, chances are there is a tiny segment whose memories of live music on the Gold Coast are stirred by the names of these now-defunct venues. And there’s many more that rest in peace alongside them.
While the famed fun capital of Australia – home to Schoolies, theme parks, and a recent bold bid to build a Trump Tower – is not likely to instantly spring to mind as a historic live music and arts locale.
Its drawcard of beaches, the newness of a then-burgeoning young city and its work-and-play mentality made it a playground for the loose, early days of touring for the much-loved Australian bands of the time.
Most often reminisced about is The Playroom, which opened on the Southern Gold Coast highway in 1966 and lived on staggeringly until 1999.
With its prominent location and iconic surf mural splashed across its exterior, it was a bulkhead venue that weathered Queensland’s then-archaic liquor licensing laws, and played host to artists like Johnny O’Keefe, INXS, Midnight Oil, Split Enz – even in its dying days it hosted bands that were, on paper, polar opposites: think TISM, Sonic Youth, and Fear Factory.
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In the 1980s, Bombay Rock in Surfers Paradise was the place to be – The Cure, Divinyls, The Psychedelic Furs and more also thought so, and graced its two-tiered hall.
In the 1990s and onwards, The Patch and Rattlesnake in Coolangatta, Troccadero in Surfers Paradise and Fisherman’s Wharf (or “Fishos” to locals) in Main Beach echoed the same calibre of line-ups, and the hardcore that crept up in the 2000s led punters to Chophouse, Shed 5, and Miami Shark Bar.
Not one of these storied venues remains, and publications, photos and oral histories of them are hard to come by.
Samantha Morris, a long-time Gold Coaster and co-founder of the Gold Coast Music Network, has taken up the almighty task of writing a book outlining the region’s often disregarded but incredibly valuable music history in the face of turbulent licensing legislation and a city with an identity problem.
“People have romanticised this notion of how good those venues were; there's no question that they were absolute superstars for that time and era,” she explains.
“Some of Australia’s most successful bands visited the Gold Coast and played two-to-four nights in a row – to packed houses. We had this thriving live music scene happening at that time.
“The thing that's changed is not the music or the venues or the promoters – it's everything else in society,” she adds. “From all the interviews I’ve done, you can boil it down to a few things.”
Those few things are a complex and inexhaustive list of tangible and tangled issues.
Firstly, festivals came into the fold in the early 1990s, and punters realised they could pay one price and see ten of their favourite bands on one day, which meant they slowly stopped paying to see those bands headline their own shows.
Then new liquor licensing laws came in.
Up until the ‘90s, liquor licensing was policed at the federal level, not the state, which meant venues were on edge at the thought of the Feds raiding them for underage drinkers. Then state liquor licensing arrived, which put even tougher penalties for how venues served alcohol.
“So the culture of underage drinking in venues kind of disappeared overnight, which certainly was not a bad thing,” Morris explains. “Bombay Rock was the first venue in Australia to bring in plastic reusable cups because someone threw a stubby across the room and some poor bloke got hurt.
“We also had other party drugs start to come onto the market, which again impacted the sort of the music people were going to see, and the amount of booze they were drinking, which impacted what bands the venues put on.
“There's also the corporatisation of music ticketing and booking,” she adds. “Where a venue would previously have a booking agent that would book all the bands, we started to see independent booking agents who would take a cut, which meant all of the prices went up.”
Add to this the impact of social media and influencer culture today, where people can do a vibe check of the venue itself and who’s going to be there first, before deciding whether they’ll go or just catch up on the night’s proceedings later on someone’s feed.
“It's not one particular issue that has impacted venues over the last 30 years here. It's like death by 100 cuts; tiny little things that have had a really big impact,” Morris says.
“The reality is, if someone opened a venue identical to The Playroom today, it would not survive in the current climate, without state and local government support.”
Despite this sobering truth, today’s Gold Coast venues with a few years under their belts have learnt to adapt to the modern challenges thrown their way, like COVID, cyclones and economic downturns, and leaned into making their venues more mutable spaces.
Coolangatta Hotel, Vinnies Dive Bar, Eddie’s Grubhouse, Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, Miami Marketta, and a handful more have diversified their offerings of music, art, food, and community gatherings to ensure their continued survival.
A new era for Miami Marketta, which originally opened in 2011, was heralded recently, with founder Emma Milikins announcing an addition to its existing 500-person capacity Studio 56 venue.
The Syrup Factory – slated for opening in August 2026 – will host 1600-plus punters and cater for bigger shows and “bands who would normally bypass the Gold Coast”.
“When I moved to the Gold Coast, there was only like six or eight festivals a year, so the whole of Australia wasn't dense with music like it is now,” Milikins explained.
“Even when I opened and when we first started doing live music at Marketta, it was a real struggle at the time, because promoters would just skip us for Brisbane or Byron Bay.
“I always say we bring them in with food and we feed them art. But it was a real hard sell for a good probably five years; now it's a lot different,” she adds. “I’m excited to see how our two venues work side by side, and the ticketing alongside the population growth. I mean, we’re still a while off before the Gold Coast hits a million people.”
One aspect for which the Coast still has room for growth, according to Mo’s Desert Clubhouse co-owner Kim Ferguson, is audience development and increasing top-down efforts to incorporate the Coast’s small independent venues into the council’s busy events calendar throughout the year.
Ferguson, who moved to the Gold Coast from country Victoria and started Mo’s as a multi-use venue with its 250-capacity gig space in 2019 with partner Christian Tryhorn, said there was an undercurrent of the city struggling with its identity as a live music provider and consumer, and it was sometimes hindered by the high-profile City of Gold Coast-run events that pull huge numbers to them and away from the smaller venues, sometimes for free, cannibalising already thin crowds.
“It’s amazing that our council is behind putting on these huge events and festivals,” Ferguson says.
“But instead of spending thousands of dollars on stages and all in public areas, why not also use the smaller venues that are already set up and give them an income, a possibility to trade or to operate within those festivals, like a fringe festival concept.
“These events are meant to be helping businesses and community, but in fact, they can often really damage the music venues’ ability to trade,” she continues.
“We don't have these multi-million-dollar pokie machines that prop up the venues. Funding that's more targeted towards independent venues or venues without pokie machines is something that needs to be addressed by council and government.
“Without these venues, without us, without the smaller guys, you're not going to get the places for these artists to perform outside of these huge events – they’ll just collapse.”
Former Powderfinger bassist and now Queensland Night-Life Economy Commissioner John “JC” Collins was appointed chair of an expert advisory panel in 2025 to unpack issues relevant to the success of late-night economies across Queensland.
The panel looked at issues including economic and business operating conditions, regulatory settings, workforce, and transport and safety, with the findings expected well ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“There’s a real opportunity here for councils and industry to work together in partnership to benefit the whole community and the entire ecosystem,” Collins said.
“By collaborating, we can ensure that everyone, from local businesses to grassroots artists, has the chance to thrive and contribute to a vibrant, sustainable entertainment and nightlife scene.
“In the Moonside report, which I handed to the Minister at the end of last year, there were a number of initiatives that I believe can help boost the nighttime economy, and I look forward to the government’s decision on those.”
Both Ferguson and Morris argue that another area ripe for intervention centres around audience development.
After opening Mo’s right before COVID came, Ferguson watched the generation who were 16-17 years old when the pandemic hit turn 21-22 and start coming out to gigs – but were still unfamiliar with the intimacy of a live music experience.
“It's about that lived experience while you're here, and that's been an educational process, that's not just something that's happening naturally,” Ferguson explains.
“When people talk about how hard it is to get ticket sales, our biggest challenge always comes back down to that re-education of the new generation – that this is something worth spending your money on.”
Despite the old, lauded venues whose hallowed halls who have long fallen quiet, and the modern-day issues assailing existing venue owners, the City of Gold Coast council recently announced two new venues that will rise in the coming years – the $40 million, 2000-capacity Gold Coast Music Hall in Surfers Paradise, set to open in 2028; and a planned indoor arena in Southport catering for 15,000-plus patrons from 2030.
As the first bricks fell at the recent media splash to herald the Gold Coast Music Hall development, City of Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate was confident it would “transform the Gold Coast’s most recognised visitor precinct”.
“It supports the City’s Music Action Plan 2021 which aims to grow local music infrastructure and support emerging and established talent, reinforcing the Gold Coast as a live music destination,” he added.
Cynics may argue that this new wave of venues are merely band-aid solutions to maintain the optics of the Gold Coast as an entertainment mecca, rather than addressing the myriad root causes that advocates like Morris outline in her forthcoming book.
“Academics talk about the music industry as an ecosystem, and it's a really good descriptor,” she said.
“A lot of the parts are interdependent, and it's difficult to just look at venues without looking at all of the other components that are affecting it.
“If we can invest in programs that support local artists in local venues, audience development, analysis of how people find out about local shows, what motivates them to purchase a ticket, how they access venues, support our venues to promote their shows to city-wide audiences and find new audiences, we can get there.”
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
