Soldier crabs and sunset walks: Why nobody wants to leave this seaside suburb |
Soldier crabs and sunset walks: Why nobody wants to leave this seaside suburb
May 25, 2026 — 4:59am
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Sandgate’s inhabitants share a certain feeling. Might it be gratitude? Smugness, perhaps? A sense that we may just have cracked it – life, that is, and the best way to go about it?
Early on weekday mornings or late in the afternoon, any hour of the weekend, you will find us – on bikes, with prams, alone with a podcast, or deep in conversation with a friend or dog – streaming, with single-minded purpose down one of our 25 avenues towards the sea.
The Turrbal people called this area Warra, meaning expanse of water, and it’s not just a cooling breeze on a humid summer day that our foreshore offers, but something more profound – an invitation to stare thoughtfully into the distance, a sense of space, room to breathe.
A long-term camping ground for the Turrbal, the area’s appeal was not lost on European settlers either, and in the late 19th century, Cobb and Co began to bring well-heeled holiday-makers to enjoy the sea air. The train line, completed in 1882, made the trip more accessible to the wider public, and soon Sandgate became known as the Brighton of Queensland, with soft-drink kiosks, boarding houses, and the Sandgate Pier Baths (offering segregated bathing, with women on the northern side and men on the southern) creating a........