THEN: January 1963. Louisa Van Deurzen, representing Redcliffe, was the last of The Sunday Mail Sun Girl winners.

The pretty 18-year-old model was urged by her family to enter the competition, which ran each summer for 13 years.

Louisa beat a well-known Queensland face for the title that year: Annette Allison, who found fame in the television industry.

NOW: Louisa gave away modelling in her early 30s to raise her two sons.

About 10 years ago she went back to it.

She remembers with fondness the heady days at the height of her career. "We were celebrities," she says.

"We were in the magazines and newspapers all the time, so when we walked down Queen Street, everyone knew us."

Occasionally she'll still run into someone who says "I remember you and the yellow swimsuit you wore".

THEN: November 1958. When a shark mauled 21-year-old Peter Spronk at Surfers Paradise on a Sunday afternoon, five life savers plunged in to help.

Peter Brennan, the same age as Spronk, helped bring him to shore but he had already died.

Brennan, Alan Bradford, Errol Tompkinson, Eddie Burnett and Peter Flint were awarded bravery medals by the Royal Humane Society.

NOW: Peter Brennan gave up active beach patrol when he married a few years after the shark attack but is a life member of the Surfers life saving club.

He says the five acted on instinct: "We saw a lot of blood in the water and we raced down from the clubhouse.

"Alan Bradford, who was out on his ski, was the first to get to him.

"I swam out in the belt. When I reached him he was probably already dead, although I didn't know that.

"I thought he may have just been unconscious.

"But his injuries were horrific. His legs were almost completely gone."

THEN: April 1965. Part-time model and receptionist at the Beachcomber Hotel, Annette Welch, 23, came into work one day and was asked by her boss Bernie Elsey to don a gold lamé bikini adorned with coins, a sash and a tiara to launch the meter maid concept.

Elsey and the Surfers Paradise Progress Association felt pretty girls patrolling the streets with sixpences to feed expired parking meters would counter bad publicity about the council's meters.

NOW: Annette married businessman Doug Bryant about six months after donning that gold bikini and settled down to married life.

She was really only the publicity face of meter maids. "I never actually worked as a meter maid. For three days I donned the bikini for the press for a few hours, then took it off and went back to work in the office," she says.

"It was fun. I saw it as just another modelling job. I also did some promotional trips as a meter maid as well.