It’s Hot in Brisbane but it’s Coolangatta was recorded in 1953 by singer Gwen Ryan, accompanied by Claude Carnell’s Orchestra with Doug Roughton’s Hokey Pokey Club on vocals as well.
We can only imagine that it was a tourism promotion of some kind. Carnell was a venue operator and band leader on the Gold Coast from the ’50s through to the late ’70s, but it is the only recording we know of by Gwen Ryan.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.