Bernadette Young, presenter for ABC Coast Radio, is doing what she loves, in a city she grew up spending many weekends visiting during her childhood. Bern, as she prefers to be called, has big ambitions for herself in 2013. 

 She has watched the Gold Coast grow and mature from a beachside town into an ever-expanding city. “I still marvel at just how big the Surfers Paradise skyline is these days. When I was a kid there was a clear division between Broadbeach and Surfers, but now, especially from the angle on Burleigh Beach, it just looks like it’s all one big CBD.” 

Bern has moved around Australia with her career. She’s lived in Perth, Alice Springs, Sydney, and is now back on the GC for the second time and can’t find anything to fault the city on. “My family and I live so comfortably here, in a house we can afford to pay off, in a suburb where my soul feels good. My partner’s a musician so the Gold Coast’s rapidly growing cultural scene is also a bonus for us, and when I watch my children play on the beaches where I played, I smile.” 

Talking has always been one of Bern’s favourite things to do and after completing university she spent the better part of a year applying for jobs before getting a break as a cadet reporter for WIN Television, working in and around regional Queensland before getting a role on the Gold Coast with Channel 9 and then 7. She grew frustrated with turning her interesting interviews into 10-second sound bites, and having to be concerned about her lipstick before her questions and made the switch to radio. 

ilivelocal asked Bern what she wanted in 2013. “It might sound a bit ambitious, but I quite simply want to make the best breakfast radio show in this city. I can’t do that on my own because the best radio shows have the best contributors and the best contributors are locals who listen and tell me what’s happening.”