Week 44 Noosa, Maleny & Montville - OZ

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So now I was heading for the famous Sunshine Coast and the posh area of Noosa. The bus trip from Hervey Bay was very pleasant as it only took 3.5 hours and passed by some lovely countryside as the areas got more populated and less natural and wild. We had a mandatory 45 minute break at a great place with a terrace overlooking a lake filled with birds, however it was only about another 30 minutes before we reached Noosa so it was slightly annoying to have stopped.

The area around Noosa reeks of money and is beautiful, manicured and upmarket. Is very green with a wide variety of imported trees, shrubs and flowers and gently rolling hills sporting massive properties. You need serious money to live here and it was also an expensive stop as all of the accommodation is on the pricey side. I thought I was getting a good deal on a Secret Hotel from the web as on paper it sounded fab, but the reality didn’t really deliver and it was an expensive mistake. It was way out of town with a shuttle bus only every 3 hours, it was over-designed and looked great but the furniture was horribly uncomfortable and it backed onto a swamp. The staff were great but I spent as little time as possible there, which was a shame as it was one of the most expensive places I have stayed in Australia and I could have got a place on Hasting Street in the centre of town for the same cost. Hey, no point in stressing and I am bound to make some errors of judgment when I choose where to stay, but I wish this hadn’t hit my wallet so hard. I managed to make up some of the overspend by eating cheap in shopping centre food courts and buying non-cook groceries - they even made that hard at the Swamp Hotel as they only provided a small fridge that was full of their maxi-bar products for sale for only an 500 percent markup.

Having arrived in the early afternoon I grabbed the shuttle down to check out the town centre and beach and make the most of the sunshine. Noosa is my favourite beach so far, perhaps because its a crescent bay with a tree covered promentory at one end and a rock breakwater at the other, rather than the massive long and wide open beaches further north. I think I like the coziness of smaller coves. The right hand finger of land leads out to First Point and is the beginning of the National Park that has some lovely walks through the forest to other beaches, including a nudist one. Between the Main beach and First Point I found a beautiful stretch of sand backed by rocks and then trees, that was deserted. I settled there for a couple of hours watching the activity just out to sea in front of me that included paddle boarders standing on long, wide boards with a long paddle they used to manoeuvre around. A couple of them surfed into shore riding the gentle rolling waves but most fell off before reaching the beach and walked their boards up the sand. Also there were several swimmers who were obviously in heavy training who were swimming back and forth across the whole width of the bay for the full two hours I sat there, so they must have been really fit.

There is a good boardwalk around the entire bay and many cut-through alleys onto Hastings Street, the main tourist street that is filled with boutiques and expensive cafes and restaurants. An alternative area that is attractive and cheaper is Noosaville, an area fronting a nice bit of the Noosa River with a wide strip of grassy parkland running the whole length. You can get there on the ferry which is also a good way to spend a few hours as you can get an all day pass for under $20 and each stop has something good to do or see. The park has an fitness route along it with public exercise machines every couple of hundred metres where you are meant to stop and do 30 repetitions as you jog or run along the track - all are well maintained and its a nice amenity. There is a really wide range of restaurants in this area too.

Noosa has a construction limit of 3 floors and only has a couple of buildings that are higher that were built in the 1980’s, with huge controversy about backhanders to some people on the Council. Apparently most new large properties are building their foundations strong enough to add more than the 3 storey limit, in case the ruling changes in the future. However the low-rise town is hugely attractive and it would be a real shame to change it as its probably the single most important element to the overall feel of the place that sets it apart from its neighbours and the towns along the overbuilt Gold Coast. By the way its a bit like Milton Keynes and has 104 roundabouts.

The following day the weather turned cold and wet with a dodgy forecast for the following couple of days too. Sunshine Coast, my bottom. I spent some time investigating the various activities on offer and having decided that surf lessons or game fishing were not my thing, I booked onto a full day tour to what they call the Hinterland. This is an area inland that is full of lovely little villages and some impressive natural landscapes, with deep valleys, steep escarpments and some of the most expensive real-estate in the State.

Our guide and driver Steve collected me at a very comfortable 9.30am and we set off to pick up a few other people further down the coast, which was nice for me as I had been considering a future stop in this area and it gave me a chance for a preview. We popped into Coolum, then we collected a few folks in Maroochydore and Mooloolaba - both looked like nice beaches but with many more high rise buildings that reminded me of Florida.

Steve took us far inland to the high McCarthy’s Lookout for our panoramic view of the Glass House Mountains that are the plug remains of volcanoes that pushed their way up through the sandstone rock and erupted 25 million years ago. The eruptions produced a particularly hard and thick lava which remain as the dozen or so plugs that can be seen from where we lingered for a kodak moment. There are several theories about why Cook named the mountains Glass House, but the most popular is that they reminded him of the glass furnace kiln chimneys that were tall and cone-shaped in a town called Glasshouses in his native Yorkshire, UK.

Next on the itinerary were stops at two of the main villages in the area, Maleny and Montville. The two villages each sit on a plateau of basalt that spewed from the volcanoes forming a hard layer on the ground. Over time the surrounding softer sandstone eroded into deep valleys leaving the wide plateaux perched on high, with fabulous views and loads more gorgeous upmarket properties. We saw many examples of the original Queenslander style houses that are built of wood and sit on a series of support poles, called stumps (I guess the originals were tree stumps). They have a verandah all the way around that is protected by the wide overhang of the roof, which in turn shades the windows and keeps out the sun and heat. The reason for the design was to allow an airflow under and around the house which helped to keep it cool and also to discourage nasty visitors such as snakes. The oldest ones are only about 3-6 feet above the ground (higher only in places that are prone to flood) but the ones built after the 1950’s are much higher, as they used the undercroft as a garage when cars became popular and affordable.


Maleny is a pretty, slightly hippy and bohemian place. It has some stunning properties and has become a popular place to drop out of the rat race, so there are lots of people working from home, many of them in creative industries. There is one main street with plenty of cafes and unique shops with a fair smattering of alternative healing and crystal shops, lots of tie-dye rainbow-coloured clothing, incense and things made from hemp. There is a great little co-op that has been running a true barter system for years, where locals swap goods or services for credits that they can spend at the shop. For example a plumber may swap his professional time or a small holder may swap their excess vegetable crops. It was cute and I bought some delicious strawberries there. The Hinterland is a fertile area and is famous for great fruit crops such as pineapples, strawberries and avocados and also macadamia nuts. The fruit tastes soooo much better than the stuff we get in the UK and is sweet and juicy, so I indulged at every opportunity. They also make fantastic fudge here too and I shamelessly filled a “medium” box with half a dozen flavours that I told myself would last me the whole week. Ummm, they were gone in 2 days.

We stopped briefly at the Maleny Dairy where you could watch the cheesemakers at work below you. The shop had little plates of cheese to try which were all very good but I didn’t buy any, instead I got some of the fresh yogurt that they make here and flavour with fresh fruits from the area. Delicious.

The main difference between the two villages we visited is that the people you see walking around Maleny are 90% locals and in Montville they are 90% tourists. Montville was very twee and had a “made for tourists” feel about it and is promoted as Australia’s answer to the English Village. Yuk. For example it had a cuckoo clock shop and a Christmas shop. The only thing I liked about it was at the very top of the steep main street is a small group of shops that included a restaurant with the most amazing terrace overlooking one of the best views in the area. It was great to sit here and have a coffee and scones in the slightly chilly air and gaze out over miles of forest.

We stopped at a couple more lookout points on the way back to the coast, one was really scary if you suffer from vertigo as it hung out over thin air on a cantilevered platform. I loved it but one of the other passengers would not go near it and screamed when her husband stepped on it. We saw several large birds of prey hovering on the thermals below us, so we must have been incredibly high. The day was gentle and made a good change from all of the wild coasts and rainforests that I have been to over the past few weeks. I enjoyed it and we seemed to get slightly better weather inland.

Australia Zoo is close by and there were plenty of tour opportunities but I didn’t go for 3 reasons. Firstly I am not overly keen on zoos and most of the main attractions were creatures that I had seen in their natural habitat during my travels around the continent over the past few months. Secondly they really play on the late Steve Irwin’s character and name, with pictures of him everywhere, the staff over-use his catchphrase “Crikey” during the shows and they almost treat him like a deity which is horrible - particularly as the guy drove me nuts when he was alive and I thought he was a prat. Lastly it’s coming up to his daughter Bindy’s 13th birthday and all kids get in free meaning there will be thousands of them there, which is enough of a reason in itself not to go.

So, I will stay for a few more days in Noosa to see if I can get some sunbathing weather, but will look for a cheaper bed.

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