Narrowreck Beach

When Australia adopted a formal surveillance plan in 1989, forty-five yellow-hooded towers reportedly began dotting the Gold Coast like sequential sentinels, each numbered from south to north. Tower 38 marks Narrowneck Beach, where the Nerang River nearly kisses the Pacific (a slender stretch so precarious that in 1921 it reportedly required Queensland’s first timber seawall). The Gold Coast now employs one of the largest professional lifeguard services in Australia, a necessity when your beaches attract millions annually.

Each tower follows the same silhouette: a peaked yellow roof pitched like a circus tent, a mesh-screened cabin, and a number painted large enough to read from the sand. Tower 38 keeps its own company at Narrowneck, flanked by dune fencing and, on any given afternoon, a rental bike someone left leaning against the stilts.