Living in Mermaid Waters: Why This Gold Coast pocket is So Easy to Love

Mermaid Waters is one of the Gold Coast's most desirable and best-connected suburbs. From peaceful waterways and parklands to pristine beaches, shopping, dining and entertainment just minutes away, it's easy to see why so many people love living here.

written by Ilona Moana (Win A Dream Home Editorial Team)

Mermaid Waters at a Glance

For anyone who doesn’t know this pocket of the Gold Coast well, the easiest way to understand it is to look at what sits around it.

Mermaid Beach is likely to become your local beach. It’s a broad, relatively low-rise stretch of coastline that Experience Gold Coast describes as calmer than busier neighbours such as Broadbeach and Surfers Paradise. It’s the sort of beach that makes more sense at seven in the morning than midday: coffee, walk, swim, home.
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Nobby Beach, around 2km from the Draw 560 home, is the place I suspect could become dangerously habitual. Breakfast, coffee, dinner, a drink, a walk along the beach — all in a compact little precinct that still feels like a neighbourhood rather than a tourist strip.

Pacific Fair and Broadbeach are close enough that shopping, restaurants, cinemas, events and the busier side of the Gold Coast are there whenever you want them, without requiring you to actually live in the middle of all that activity.

Then there’s Burleigh Heads, about 5km from the Draw 560 property. Close enough for breakfast, a headland walk, an afternoon at the beach or dinner without turning the whole thing into an expedition.

And at the centre of the reason we started looking at all of this in the first place is 399A Rio Vista Boulevard - Yourtown’s Draw 560 home, with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a saltwater pool, outdoor kitchen, solar and battery storage and a design made for the sort of indoor-outdoor living the Gold Coast does particularly well.

The location makes more sense when you stop looking at the map

Maps are terrible at explaining why you would actually want to live somewhere.

They tell you Mermaid Beach is east, Broadbeach is north and Burleigh is south. Useful, yes. Inspiring, not particularly.

What they don’t tell you is what an ordinary Saturday might actually feel like, and I think that’s where Mermaid Waters begins to win you over.

Imagine waking up with no real plans. Someone suggests coffee, so instead of driving halfway across the city or making an event of it, you head towards Mermaid Beach or Nobby’s. Maybe you walk along the beach first. Maybe you don’t. Maybe breakfast turns into another coffee because nobody needs to be anywhere and the weather is too good to rush.

Experience Gold Coast describes Mermaid Beach as having a noticeably calmer feel than Broadbeach and Surfers Paradise, helped in part by the lower-rise character along that stretch of coast.

That appeals to me.

I like the Gold Coast very much. I’m just not entirely convinced I want the entire Gold Coast happening outside my bedroom window every morning.

Mermaid Waters gives you a little separation from it. And when you want the noise, restaurants, beaches or people again, they’re all right there.

That’s a very different proposition from simply saying “centrally located”.

I think this is the bit people miss about Mermaid Waters

Mermaid Waters isn’t trying desperately to impress you, and I mean that as a compliment.

There are suburbs that sell themselves immediately: ocean views, nightlife, restaurants, big-name beaches, lots of reasons to say “look at us”.

Mermaid Waters is more subtle.

Its canals run through established residential streets. Boats sit behind homes. Palm trees appear where palm trees are supposed to. People actually live here rather than simply checking in for a week.

And because you’re sitting just behind the coastal strip, you can choose your version of the Gold Coast depending on what sort of day you’re having.

If you want polished restaurants and a little more life, Broadbeach is there. If you want coffee, bare feet and breakfast, head towards Mermaid Beach or Nobby’s. If you feel like Burleigh, you go south. If you suddenly remember you need something — or decide you desperately need something that didn’t exist on your shopping list ten minutes earlier - Pacific Fair is nearby.

And if you feel like seeing absolutely nobody?

Stay home.

That last option may be considerably more valuable than it sounds.

And then there’s Nobby’s…

I suspect Nobby Beach would be dangerous for me.  Not dangerous dangerous... 'financially' dangerous in the “we could just grab breakfast out” sense.

Because the really good local precincts aren’t necessarily the ones you make a reservation for three weeks in advance and visit twice a year. They’re the ones that become part of your routine without you realising it.

You go for coffee because you’re nearby. Breakfast because it’s Sunday. Dinner because neither of you feels like cooking. Someone says, “Do you feel like going out?” and ten minutes later you’re on your way.

That’s what makes living near a good local precinct different from living near a tourist attraction. It slips into your week.

Nobby’s has cafés, restaurants, bars and the beach all sitting within an easy little pocket, and the whole area has that lovely Australian combination of slightly dressed-up and completely casual. You can eat somewhere very nice and still somehow end up with sand in the car.

Perfect.

Mermaid Beach might actually be the bigger luxury

The Yourtown house is obviously beautiful, but I keep coming back to the idea of having Mermaid Beach only minutes away.

Not because I imagine spending my days stretched out on the sand doing nothing. I wouldn’t.

It’s more about what happens when somewhere beautiful becomes ordinary enough that you don’t have to make a production out of it.

You don’t need to “go to the beach” for the day. You can walk there for twenty minutes before breakfast. Have a swim because it’s hot. Meet someone for coffee. Take the grandkids down for an hour. Go for an evening walk because everyone has spent too long sitting around the table eating.

You might even get up for sunrise occasionally, then feel smug about it for the next six months.

Mermaid Beach has patrolled sections and is known for morning swimming, surfing and long beach walks, but what appeals to me most is simply its usefulness. It isn’t only somewhere beautiful to look at. It’s somewhere you could actually use as part of daily life.

That kind of luxury interests me far more than marble.

Then you come home - and this is where living there starts making much more sense

This was the point where the Yourtown house properly clicked for me.

You could look at Draw 560 purely as a beautiful property, and it is. The home at 399A Rio Vista Boulevard was designed by Jayson Pate, with light-filled living spaces opening towards the saltwater pool and outdoor entertaining areas. There’s an outdoor kitchen, easy-care landscaping, 6.6kW solar and 16.64kWh of battery storage.

All impressive.

But after looking properly at Mermaid Waters, I don’t think the finishes are the whole story... It’s what happens after you close the front door.

This is a home I can imagine being full - not styled-for-a-photo full, but life full.

I can see someone at the kitchen bench cutting up salad while somebody else is outside checking what’s happening with the barbecue. Gary, naturally, would have taken over the cooking regardless of whether anybody had asked him to. There would be too many plates on the table because lunch for four had somehow turned into lunch for nine, the kids would be in the pool, somebody would have brought bread, someone else would have brought absolutely nothing and nevertheless be the first person eating.

There’d be music on, doors open, bare feet everywhere, and nobody particularly keen to leave.

That’s the Gold Coast home I can get excited about.

Not a house so immaculate that everybody is frightened to touch anything. I want the kitchen bench covered with food, glasses, somebody’s handbag and something that was meant to be put in the fridge an hour ago. I want a wet towel somewhere it absolutely should not be.

A beautiful house is lovely.

A beautiful house people actually want to gather in is something else entirely.

That’s a home.

The funny thing is, you might end up staying home more

That’s probably the contradiction of this location.

You have Mermaid Beach, Nobby’s, Broadbeach and Burleigh around you, yet the Draw 560 house itself looks like the sort of place that might make going out considerably less appealing.

You’ve got the pool, the outdoor kitchen, big open living areas and Gold Coast weather.

Why exactly are we making a restaurant booking again?

I can imagine those summer evenings where someone throws something on the barbecue at five o’clock and somehow everybody is still sitting outside at ten. Christmas lunch that starts with good intentions and finishes with half the family in the pool. Sunday afternoons when the grandchildren arrive and nobody leaves remotely close to the time they said they would.

That’s where property becomes emotional.

At some point, you stop looking at benchtops and tapware and start placing your own people inside the rooms.

And once that happens, you aren’t really looking at a floorplan anymore.

You’re imagining a life.

When you do leave home, you’re rather spoilt for choice

Broadbeach is close enough for dinner without needing to call it “a night in Broadbeach”.

Pacific Fair is close enough that forgetting something isn’t catastrophic.

Burleigh is close enough that you can simply decide to go.

And I think that is a very different kind of luxury from visiting the Gold Coast once or twice a year and trying to squeeze every beach, restaurant and attraction into four frantic days.

If you lived here, you could waste time properly.  I mean that in the nicest possible way.

You don’t need to cram Mermaid Beach, Nobby’s, Broadbeach and Burleigh into some kind of itinerary. If you don’t get to Burleigh this weekend, there’s always next weekend. If Nobby’s is busy, go tomorrow.

That’s one of the nicest differences between visiting somewhere and actually calling it home.

You’re allowed to leave things for later.

I also like that Mermaid Waters feels slightly removed from the performance of the Gold Coast

There is a version of Gold Coast living that feels a little like being seen living on the Gold Coast.

Mermaid Waters doesn’t strike me that way. It feels more grown up. 

Still sunny, still coastal, still full of water, palms and pools — but with the volume turned down a little.

And I think that becomes more valuable as you get older. You can join in without needing to participate all the time.

You can have Broadbeach nearby without having Broadbeach outside your window. You can have the ocean close without living directly on the beachfront. You can have restaurants everywhere and still decide that eight people around your own table sounds considerably better.

Perhaps that’s why Mermaid Waters becomes more appealing the longer you think about actually living there rather than holidaying there.

So would I live in Mermaid Waters?

Yes.

And I genuinely didn’t expect to say that when I first started looking at this draw.  I’d always thought of Mermaid Waters rather casually as “the suburb behind Mermaid Beach”.

Useful location. Nice homes. Lots of canals. 

But that undersells it.

The more interesting thing about Mermaid Waters is what sits around it. You are tucked into a residential pocket while some of the best parts of the central and southern Gold Coast fan out around you.

You don’t really have to choose between them.  You can go to the beach in the morning, Broadbeach that evening and Burleigh the next day — or stay home, invite everyone over and put something on the barbecue.

That flexibility feels like the real luxury here.

And yes, this all started with a charity prize home

It isn’t simply a $3.26 million prize package... It’s a potential life.

The package centres on the Jayson Pate-designed Mermaid Waters home and includes furniture and electricals, $20,000 in gold bullion and the other listed inclusions.

Those figures are impressive, of course. But they’re not actually the part that stays with me.

What stays with me is wondering what Tuesday morning would feel like if this were your address.

→  What would Christmas look like here?

→  Who would you invite over?

→  Would Nobby’s become your regular breakfast spot?

→  Would you really start swimming before breakfast, or would you just keep telling everybody that you intended to?

→  Would your children suddenly decide that your place was where Sunday lunch should be every week?

→  Would the grandchildren start appearing in swimmers before anyone had even discussed using the pool?

Those are much more interesting questions.

And they are exactly why this one caught our attention.

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Win A Dream Home independently showcases and compares Australian charity prize homes, bringing the current homes, locations and details together in one place. We don’t sell tickets; where applicable, links to enter take you through to the official charity provider.