PORTALOO PARTY PRECINCT
More toilets to ease the public urination problem in the heart of the nightclub precinct won’t arrive anytime soon
THE flood is coming. There will be Schoolies come the end of November, and then Christmas and New Year’s Eve revellers.
But the flood is not in reference to the punters who’ll surely jam into Surfers Paradise, swelling its bars and Orchid Avenue night spots.
No, the flood refers to the rivers of urine those caught short will leave behind.
It is a problem which embarrassingly rose to national and then international prominence when the Gold Coast City Council temporarily lost the plot and had open-air urinals installed down Cavill Avenue.
The trial of the harebrained installations at the end of last year saw people take a partially covered leak in full view of passing pedestrians.
Mayor Tom Tate, overseas at the time, ordered it to be shut down after a local business outcry.
Then things became even more loo-dicrous when a suggestion to use so-called “pee-proof” paint was entertained as a solution. Pee-proof paint on buildings would supposedly see urine deflect back onto public piddlers. It’s fair to say that idea was not allowed to let fly.
However, despite the open-air urinal shame, the council is still little closer to solving the problem by doing what most retailers and bar bosses agree is required: building more permanent public loos.
The council will be forced to truck in portaloos to the party precinct this Christmas, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported last week.
Council officials have highlighted three potential areas between Cavill, Orchid and Elkhorn avenues where a $500,000 public toilet block could go but a decision is not due until next month.
“We will not have the new structure ready for Christmas but we will have temporary ones which come in on trucks at midnight and then be driven out at 5am so the shop owners are not disturbed,” Surfers Paradise councillor Lex Bell told the Bulletin.
However, he warned even once the permanent new block is built it may still not be enough at busy periods and portable loos may still be required.
It’ll be music to the ears of downtown Surfers retailers and bar owners, who say it can’t come soon enough.
Nathan Innes, owner of new Surfers prohibition-era bar 19 Orchid Avenue, tells Coast Weekend in the few months since he opened his experience of public urination has been “horrendous”.
“I don’t know how many public toilets there are now but there aren’t enough.”
Nathan says the back trade entrance to his venue down an alley became a hotspot for public piddlers during the University Games in the last week of September.
“It’s a fairly regular occurrence anyway but given there were a lot of people from out of town and a lot of younger people, the prevalence that weekend was very high.
“It was the perfect alley for people to take a leak but that’s also our staff and trade entrance, it’s where our rubbish bins are. It was a real problem.
“I was constantly washing it out with a hose.”
Nathan says more permanent public toilets are a must: “I can’t understand how there is not more in place already, given it’s an entertainment precinct.”