THIS IS A TIME NONE OF US WILL EVER FORGET

WHENEVER I talk about the scope and scale of GC2018, people often ask if the city will be able to handle so many visitors coming here for the Games.

As the first regional city in Australia to host a Commonwealth Games it’s a fair enough question, but I am always happy to assure them the Gold Coast is more than up to it.

We have lots of great accommodation and highquality food for our guests.

We have plenty for them to do when they are here with the Games and all the man-made and natural attractions and Festival 2018 events.

Our skies and ocean are blue and clean and Gold Coasters are a pretty friendly bunch.

Our guests will most likely take public transport as you and I do when we travel to far away towns and cities, we’ll see them everywhere in their national colours and we’ll try to guess their accents as we sit alongside them at the hockey or badminton or beach volleyball or at the supermarket or bus stop or wherever else we go during those 11 days in April.

It’s going to be a busy time – a really busy time as we’ve said all along – and we might not be used to queueing at security checkpoints or for an ice cream or a tram or a train and we’ll have to change the way we come and go for a few days.

But it’s also going to be a time that none of us will ever forget for all the right reasons.

OUR VISITORS WILL BRING AN ENERGY THAT ... WILL LITERALLY POWER THE GAMES

As people who have been to previous Games will attest, our visitors will bring an energy that, mixed with the excitement of Gold Coasters, will literally power the Games.

You will have noticed brightly coloured banners and signage popping up all over the city.

Well, there’s plenty more to come as we continue to dress our young but maturing city for a graduation party like no other.

I look forward to working with you to take GC2018 and the Gold Coast to the world.