10 Gold Coast secrets that'll supercharge your next visit

While anyone in winter not wearing a wetsuit in the ocean must be an out of towner (even if the water rarely dips below 20 degrees) - a true Gold Coast local will never wear shoes, even on those rare mornings here when it's genuinely cold. We'll wear beanies, snow jackets, tracksuit pants ... but we'll round off these outfits with our thongs. Most bars and restaurants on the Gold Coast allow you to wear thongs - or they'd go out of business.

Want to get a local riled up? Ask them about the Gold Coast light rail. Most consider it a "white elephant", which has caused unnecessary traffic chaos as our main thoroughfare (the Gold Coast Highway) is ripped apart to build it (it will operate south to Burleigh Heads by next year). Buses already operate up and down that highway but few locals ever use them. We're the Los Angeles of Australia; locals prefer their cars (or Uber). Tourists: take a tip; there are always plenty of empty seats.

Sure, we're not exactly the Barossa Valley or the Hunter, but drive 30 minutes or so west of the coast and you'll find Australia's most secret wine region. The Gold Coast Hinterland has some pretty spectacular wineries and winery restaurants - and while a lot of the wine produced there is grown three hours south-west in Queensland's Granite Belt, local grapes grow in those hills - especially verdelho, semillon and chambourcin. They're not bad either. Try Witches Falls Winery or Cedar Creek Estate. witchesfalls.com.au; cedarcreekestate.com.au

It's not just wine you'll find in the Gold Coast Hinterland. There are two World Heritage-listed national parks up there, barely an hour's drive from the surf. They're listed within the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia - which means they're the oldest rainforests on Earth. There are more than 25,000 hectares of protected parks, 500-plus waterfalls, over 1000 kilometres of walking trails and two of the country's longest-established eco-retreats right in the middle, Binna Burra Lodge and O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat. binnaburralodge.com.au; oreillys.com.au

Locals mightn't be so hot for public transport, but we sure love a good bike ride; and the Gold Coast has the best coastal bike path in Australia. There are more than 1000 kilometres of bikeways in the area (including plenty of mountain-biking options). But the best ride of them all is the 48-kilometre-long Darren Smith Memorial Route - which runs the entire length of the coast from Point Danger on the border with NSW to Paradise Point in the north, following the beach the entire way.

More people work in the trade industry than in offices on the Gold Coast, so you're more likely to find bad traffic between 6am and 7am than 8am and 9am; and between 2.30pm and 3.30pm than 5pm and 6pm. Though the worst local traffic comes at school drop-off and pick-up time - remember, Gold Coast people, including the kids, don't do buses. And locals know to avoid the M1 to Brisbane unless it's deathly urgent: it's one of the country's most traffic-congested highways.

Bondi has Bondi Icebergs and North Bondi RSL on its iconic beach, but we have RSLs and surf clubs on the best vantage points across all 57 kilometres of our beaches. So you'll always get cheap(er) drinks and cheap(er) meals - but you better not mind having horse racing on TV, with a TAB in the corner. Even though these days some ridiculously trendy beach clubs built on the beach (like Burleigh's Burleigh Pavilion built so close your wine will have salt in it), many long-term locals prefer to leave those spots to tourists. burleighpavilion.com

Unlike in places like Sydney and Melbourne, any golfer can play the best courses in the Gold Coast (most high-rated courses in Sydney and Melbourne are reserved for members and their guests only). There are more than 35 public courses - all within a 40-minute drive of each other, and only a handful cost more than $100 a round. And yet these include some of the country's highest rated public courses, designed by the likes of Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

While we know you lot often think of Surfers Paradise when you're picturing the Gold Coast, no true local goes there. We did when we were 18 and 19 looking for all-nighters, but once we got that out of our system, we prefer to pretend it's not there. We hear it's gone through an enormous metamorphosis in the past five years, and that there are great bars and restaurants and hotels there now, but ask any true local and they won't have been in years.