The Exchange is a fine example of a disused building repurposed for future use. In 2015, Telstra and local engineering family the Howes partnered to adapt a 60-year-old building into co-share office space.

Home to 26 desks, a meeting room, kitchen, photography studio and four artist studios, the Exchange is located on a site that housed the Gold Coast’s first post and telegraph office built in 1909, followed by two-story brick building to house a state-of-the-art automatic telephone exchange, in 1957.

The old Post Office was demolished in 1967 and a new Post Office and Telephone Exchange erected a year later. Built in the stark Modernist style for $369,828, the facility was run by the Postmaster-General’s Department, part of which later became Telecom, then Telstra.