What would they make of the sprawling seaside metropolis now covering those dunes? Of the soaring skyscrapers which stand shoulder to shoulder and cast their eerie shadows across the sands in the late afternoon?

The Gold Coast's concrete and steel skyline has attracted its share of criticism over the years, yet it remains the most nationally and internationally recognisable symbol of entrepreneurial endeavour and economic prosperity in Queensland.

The Queensland coast is a tourist and residential mecca, the fastest-growing part of a state where any patch of coastal land is a highly prized — and highly priced — commodity.

The State Government estimates that 85 per cent of Queensland's population now lives in the area defined as the coastal zone.

The most spectacular growth in the past three decades has occurred in the "sun belt" which extends from Coolangatta north to Noosa and west to Ipswich. This area now supports about 2.3 million people, or 65 per cent of the state's population.

There's been some drift to the coast because of the downturn in the rural economy, but recent growth has largely been fuelled by an influx of interstate migrants: young families seeking a better lifestyle, professionals with burnout chasing a sea change, retirees looking to swim, fish and enjoy their final years fanned by gentle sea breezes.

Queensland's beaches are arguably the state's biggest drawcard. More than any other feature of the landscape, they have come to represent the lifestyle and aspirations of Queenslanders.

It would be unthinkable for a contemporary state tourism campaign not to include seductive images of bikini-clad beachgoers and bronzed lifeguards.

The hostility which greeted the Premier's 2001 suggestion that all car number plates drop the "Sunshine State" moniker for "Smart State" is another indication of how ingrained sun — and by association sand and surf — are in the state psyche.

In her book Sunny Memories, Lana Wells describes the beach as the "headquarters of egalitarianism" and "a barometer of social thinking" in this country.

"Laws and by-laws, rules and regulations, bans and bickering over beaches and what goes on — and comes off — at them, mirror Australia's social changes," she writes. That's especially true in Queensland, where the social barometer has been set by what we build at the beach, how high we build it, and what we wear or don't wear on it.