ABSTRACT
As Australia's sixth largest city, set in the southeast of subtropical Queensland and along 57 kilometers of coastline, the Gold Coast enjoys its status as a "premier tourist destination" synonymous with "sun, surf, and sex". This chapter argues that the tourist-hungry image of a liminal Gold Coast, which on its own is shallow and largely enveloped in the cultural cringe of Australia, leaves much space for cultural imagination. It maps how the Gold Coast is represented through the tourist gaze as both celebrated tourist mecca and condemned underbelly, affecting its reading as a liminal space. The chapter suggests that narrative fiction, specifically the mode of literary realism, can subvert the tourist gaze and instead illustrate the everyday lives of Gold Coast low-income locals. It conducts close textual analysis of Savage's novel as a case study for how promoting the arts and literary tourism can generate an authentic sense of place beyond the glitz and glamour of mainstream media.
