Surfer’s Paradise – a short walk from the Gold Coast & Exhibition Centre at which on Saturday Jai Opetaia, Australia’s finest fighter and the IBF cruiserweight champion, will make the latest defence of his title, this time against Germany’s Huseyin Cinkara – has long been Australia’s most popular schoolies destination. Surfer’s Paradise is a similarly short walk from Broadbeach, where the first schoolies parties, in the 1970s, took place. A reported 15,000 school leavers are in town to drink excessive amounts of sugary alcohol while dressing up for theme nights recognised as the painfully unimaginatively titled “party animal”, the inexplicable “good, evil, laconic”, and more. Such is the desire of Australia’s school leavers to celebrate the fact that until very recently most of them had long been among the most evil and laconic of all, in 2003 the Queensland government established a formal schoolies hub that means that for two weeks roads in central Surfers Paradise are closed and traffic is diverted to accommodate the hub, which operates from 7pm until midnight every night.
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