Landon_Currie

Landon Currie: Saltwater, Sexology, and Southport. G’day. I’m Landon. Born and raised in Southport, Queensland—right here on the Gold Coast. I’m a sexologist, writer, and researcher. These days, I write about my hometown for the CamoWallet project. My life’s work? Untangling the beautiful, messy knot of human connection. Sex, money, dating apps, love—it’s all just different currencies, isn’t it? I’ve spent decades collecting stories. Time to share a few of my own. Look, you can’t talk about intimacy without getting your hands dirty. I’ve had my heart stomped flat on the sand at The Spit. I’ve also felt that dizzying, electric connection with someone across a sticky bar in Surfers Paradise that made every bad date worthwhile. That’s the work. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about being comfortable with the questions. The uncomfortable ones. The ones we ask ourselves at 3am, staring at the ceiling fan. My expertise wasn’t earned in a sterile lab. It was earned in late-night conversations on my mate’s balcony in Labrador, in the quiet desperation of clients’ confessions, and in my own spectacular failures. I’m competent because I’ve been incompetent. I’m an expert because I’ve been a student. I came into the world on April 27th, 1984, at the old Southport Hospital on Queen Street. Not the gleaming new one they have now, but the original—a place that smelled of antiseptic and, weirdly, hot chips from the fish and chip shop across the road. My parents had a little fibro house just off Scarborough Street, before it got all fancy. The sound of the Gold Coast Highway was my lullaby. That distant, constant hum of cars. And the smell... the smell of the Broadwater at low tide. That thick, muddy, alive smell. I reckon that’s my earliest memory. That, and the screeching of the lorikeets tearing through the backyard. Southport back then felt like a proper town, not just a suburb. You had the Australia Fair shopping centre, which was a big deal. We’d walk down Nerang Street and my dad would point out the old Southport School buildings, talking about history. I didn’t care then. Now? Now I get it. My career path? A bloody winding one. After scraping through a psych degree at Griffith Uni—the Parklands drive campus, spent more time at the UniBar than the library, honestly—I fell into sexology. Not the academic side first. The practical side. I worked for a while at a clinic on Lawson Street, near the courts. Did intake. Heard things. Saw the raw data of human misery and longing before it was ever sanitised for a journal. Then, the digital world called. Did some consulting for a couple of dating apps. Watched how swiping changed our neural pathways, our expectations. It was fascinating and terrifying. The money part was easy. The people part? A mess. Now, my focus has shifted. I’m writing again, for the CamoWallet project on camowallet.app. And I’m writing about Southport. Tying it all together—the places I know, the people, the transactions of the heart that happen on every corner. From the hush money of a failed relationship to the financial toxicity of a bad date. It’s all connected. Living here my whole life… it’s like being in a long-term relationship with a place. You see it change. You fight with it. You fall in love with it all over again. I live just off Queen Street now, in one of those new apartment blocks. I can walk to the Broadwater in ten minutes. I know every inch of this suburb. The best coffee is at that little place on Davenport Street, the one that doesn’t have a sign. The quietest spot to think is the pier at dusk, near the Southport Yacht Club. I’ll grab a beer at the Southport RSL sometimes, listen to the old blokes tell stories. This isn’t just a postcode to me. It’s the landscape of my life. Every street—Scarborough, Nerang, High, Lawson—holds a memory. A first kiss. A last fight. A breakthrough with a client in a tiny office. A conversation that changed everything. It’s my home. The salt’s in my blood, literally. Growing up here in the 90s and early 2000s was… an education. In everything. I remember sneaking into the drive-in at the back of the Australia Fair carpark, watching movies we weren't supposed to see. The neon glow of Surfers Paradise was a constant pull—that weird, adult playground just a bus ride away. My mates and I would skateboard down at the Broadwater parklands before they were redeveloped, when it was just grass and concrete. We thought we knew everything. About girls, about life. We knew nothing. I remember the first time I had my heart truly broken. I was 19, walking home along Marine Parade, past the Southport Swimming Complex, and the whole world just felt… grey. Even the sub-tropical green looked washed out. But you get up. You walk to the fish co-op, buy a crappy piece of fish, and sit on the rocks. You watch the tide come in and cover the barnacles. And you realise it keeps coming, no matter what. That’s probably the biggest lesson Southport taught me. Resilience. The tide always comes back.