Can’t Touch This

Amy Clarke; Stuart King; Andrew Leach; Wouter Van Acker

doi:10.1017/S1359135519000058

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Journal article

Peer reviewed

Can’t Touch This

Amy Clarke, Stuart King, Andrew Leach and Wouter Van Acker

ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol.23(1), pp.63-72

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135519000058

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Abstract

Architecture

Australia's laid-back, sun-drenched beach lifestyle has been a celebrated and prominent part of its official popular culture for nigh on a century, and the images and motifs associated with this culture have become hallmarks of the country's collective identity. Though these representations tend towards stereotype, for many Australians the idea of a summer holiday at the beach is one that is intensely personal and romanticised - its image is not at all urbanised. As Douglas Booth observed, for Australians the beach has become a 'sanctuary at which to abandon cares - a place to let down one's hair, remove one's clothes [â€¦] a paradise where one could laze in peace, free from guilt, drifting between the hot sand and the warm sea, and seek romance'.1 Beach holidays became popular in the interwar years of the twentieth century, but the most intense burst of activity - both in touristic promotion and in the development of tourism infrastructure - accompanied the postwar economic boom, when family incomes were able to meet the cost of a car and, increasingly, a cheap block of land by the beach upon which a holiday home could be erected with thrift and haste. In subtropical southeast Queensland, the postwar beach holiday became the hallmark of the state's burgeoning tourism industry; the state's southeast coastline in particular benefiting from its warm climate and proximity to the capital, Brisbane. It was here - along the evocatively named Gold Coast (to Brisbane's south) and Sunshine Coast (to its north) - that many families experienced their first taste of what is now widely celebrated as the beach lifestyle. As one reflection has it: "In the era before motels and resorts, a holiday at the Gold and Sunshine coasts usually meant either pitching a tent and camping by the beach or staying in a simple cottage owned by family or friends [â€¦] Simplicity, informality, individuality [â€¦] were the hallmarks of these humble places."

Details

Title: Can’t Touch This
Authors: Amy Clarke (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - School of Social Sciences
Stuart King (Corresponding Author) - University of Melbourne
Andrew Leach (Corresponding Author) - University of Sydney
Wouter Van Acker (Corresponding Author) - Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Publication details: ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol.23(1), pp.63-72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date published: 2019
DOI: 10.1017/S1359135519000058
ISSN: 1359-1355
Organisation Unit: School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Cluster
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99451407802621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Architecture

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