Inland and Grantham

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After two wet days, one at Rainbow Bay and a side trip to Maleny where we couldn’t see past the car for misty rain and fog, we were relieved that the Sunshine Coast lived up to its name and the sun shone.

We enjoyed Noosa, riding the ferry down the river, sitting by the beach in the sunshine and, always, the shops. We decided we’d visit Coolum for a night as we hadn’t stayed there before. Coolum is on the southern end of the beautiful long white sand beach around the headland from Noosa. It was very nice there, the weather was sunny and warm and even a diversion south to the big mall at Maroochydore to buy and post birthday presents didn’t dampen our spirits. The natural area around Maroochy and Mooloolaba is lovely, but I can’t understand why they’d want to spoil it with tall buildings .. well, I can .. greed.

From Coolam, we drove inland a over the range, along the flooded valley of the Somerset Dam and on to the Lockyer Valley, the food basket of South East Queensland, and to Gatton. We booked into the caravan park – not the worse we’ve been in but it’s up there, trucks are racing past not far from our site and the timber mill over the road is noisy – and then drove around the area for a look around.

This whole area suffered severe flooding earlier this year, especially the adjoining town of Grantham, where most of the town was swept away. There is tremendous damage, homes off their footings and most uninhabitable, we noticed a car in a tree and a couple of demountable shops - the nice old shop buildings are damaged and will have to be pulled down.

There are plans to rebuild Granthan on higher ground and people have just been part of a like-for-like land grant. The rich black soil paddocks have been replanted and in time Grantham will become the nice little town it once was.

Just as we were setting up at the caravan park, the rain came, complete with thunder and lightning and continued for most of the night, though thankfully we missed out on the hail that Brisbane experienced . It isn’t very condusive to a good night’s sleep knowing you’re in a low lying area on a flood plain that’s had the worst flood for years not that long ago.

Today, however, the sun is shining so we’ll do some more touring as we head south and towards the coast again.

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