Better plans

Hosting events is great but we have to ensure the logistics are taken care of too

The Gold Coast is an events city and proudly so. It’s a title we’ve courted for years and delivered on repeatedly, not just with big-ticket extravaganzas like the 2018 Commonwealth Games but week in, week out.

That’s everything from the AFL and NRL games with the Suns and Titans to concerts, festivals and other crowd magnets.

And there’s plenty more we can get if plans for a boutique stadium are realised, let alone the 2032 Olympic Games the city is cohosting.

But what we absolutely do not need is scenes like those which played out on The Spit over the weekend.

Two-time Grammy-award winning DJ Fredrick Gibson, aka Fred Again played the pop-up event at Doug Jennings Park on The Spit on Saturday.

However the buses organised to ferry patrons to the event proved inadequate, with it drawing a bigger crowd than either the Suns or Titans AFL and NRL season openers, which were both played the same afternoon and evening.

The gridlock and lack of buses saw hundreds of people ride hire bikes to Main Beach and The Spit where they were left abandoned on the footpaths causing havoc.

Gold Coasters have been warned to brace for more, with 10 further large-scale events booked for Doug Jennings Park for the rest of the year.

Area councillor Darren Taylor said the events were booked and organised by the Gold Coast Waterways authority rather than council and questioned whether it was appropriate to hold large events on The Spit given the lack of transport infrastructure to move large numbers of people in and out. This is a fair point.

These scenes were chaotic and showed the infrastructure in place was nowhere near up to the task of dealing with crowds.

If there are to be 10 further events held on The Spit this year, there needs to be much greater planning in place and more resources tasked to it.

Put more buses on and ramp up the ferry services between The Spit and Southport.

There are easy solutions but there must be change.

With more events on the way, we cannot take further chances.