Advertisement
Published: August 23rd 2008
The Sunshine Coast We left Brisbane on 15 July, driving up past the Glass House mountains, then winding slowly up through the ranges to Montville, before the descent to Noosa. Once again, we challenge the notion that Australia is flat and boring! High up on the ridge of the Great Dividing Range, you can see for miles over the ranges and out to the coast.
At Noosa we were unable to find a caravan site in the town (first time this has happened on the trip) - but our luck was in - we discovered a wee place called Boreen Point, 17 km out of Noosa, which we liked much better! (and it was a lot cheaper too) The camping ground itself is fairly basic, but the setting is great -surrounded by huge trees and right on Lake Cootharaba. Boreen Point is probably Noosa’s best kept secret, hope it stays that way. It’s a small settlement with a magnificent old pub, the Apollonian, which has wide verandahs and is set among sweeping green lawns and tropical vegetation. Tried kangaroo loin from the pub menu one night - it was cooked rare and was very tasty.
We
ended up staying at Boreen Point for 4 nights and could have easily stayed longer. The first day it rained pretty steadily all day - we went up to the Eumundi markets, which are huge, and have lots of interesting stalls selling good quality and original stuff (but as we are travelling, we just bought coffee and macadamia nuts!). The next day we hired a double canoe from the camp and went across the lake and down the tannin creek - very still waters with great reflections. Got the car serviced in Noosa on our last day, and biked around town while waiting for the car. Although downtown Noosa is pretty touristy, the river and the National Park area are really nice and there’s a great walking track around the headland, just a stone’s throw from the main street. It was a warm sunny day and we went for a swim at Noosa Beach after lunch - amazing to be swimming in the middle of July!
Set off on the short trip down the coast to Mooloolaba the next day - no we weren’t going the wrong way - we were going to meet friends from home. Luckily we
and another shot!
thought this was rather artistic though?had booked ahead, the caravan park was very busy - we have found this to be the case in most of coastal Queensland. Was also the tightest spot we have had to back into yet - very tricky but the park staff were on hand to help guide us in. The joys of having a large caravan!
It was great to catch up with Candy and Rota, and we spent a couple of days relaxing with them. They took us out for the day in their rental car on the Monday and we went up into the hinterland to Maleny, which we liked better than the rather “cute” Montville. Went for a walk in the rainforest at the Mary Cairncross reserve - we were told to watch out for leeches, but fortunately they didn’t fancy our blood today. Finished the day at the Maroochy RSL where we had a 3 course roast meal for $12.95 each and a free courtesy van - now that was good value!
Next stop for us was Rainbow Beach, the jumping-off point for our trip to Fraser Island. Booked into the Rainbow Waters Park which we liked - it was laid back and
friendly, with very big open grassy caravan sites. Went to find out from the ranger’s office about going over to Fraser, but with the weather forecast and the tides both against us, we decided to postpone our trip for 2 days. To get to Fraser from Rainbow Beach, you take a barge across from Inskip Point to Hook Point at the southern tip of the island (a 15 minute trip, $90 return) and drive up the beach at low tide to reach the main part of the island. You can only get around Hook Point within an hour of low tide and Wednesday’s low tide was 5am! Anyway, in the end it was Saturday before the weather cleared and we spent 2 days pretty much confined to the van at Rainbow waiting for the persistent rain to stop. So pleased we weren’t on the island in the rain though, and the campground we had booked to stay at was closed for 2 days because of high winds and the risk that the huge trees there would fall down on top of the campers!
Fraser Island and our big 4WD adventure Finally we were off to Fraser
- we left our caravan at the park and with excitement and some trepidation, we set off with our camping gear at 6.30am Saturday morning. The barge leaves from Inskip Point but you need to drive across soft sand to get onto it, so we engaged 4WD and dropped our tyre pressures to 24 psi straight away. The weather had cleared up and it was fine and sunny, although the surf was still high and the tides were higher than usual. Once we had cleared Hook Point, we drove along the beach for a couple of hours, which was quite a novelty. Fraser is 4WD only, with speed limits of 80kph on the beach and 35kph on the inland roads.
Turned onto the inland road once the tide started to come in and made our way slowly along the rough soft-sand narrow roads which wind up and down the interior of Fraser -the island is basically a huge sand dune covered in magnificent rainforest. Fraser has lots of “perched” freshwater lakes - lakes that have formed on top of sand dunes - consequently the water is crystal clear and the silica sand is so fine you can ex-foliate your
Noosa National Park
view from the headland walk hands and feet and clean your jewellery with it. Spent the rest of the day exploring this part of the island and braved a swim in Lake McKenzie which is a beautiful blue lake with pure white sand. Lake Wabby is the deepest lake on Fraser and is being slowly engulfed by a huge sandblow, of which there are quite a few on the island (where sand blown inland by the prevailing winds covers and slowly buries the vegetation). The inland roads were fun to drive on but you had to be pretty careful as the combination of soft sand, tree roots, ruts and corrugations made it a bit tricky - at one stage, we found ourselves stuck on the narrow roads behind a couple of Landcruisers full of young Irish and French tourists- the first 4WD had dropped down into a large rut and buckled the rim, the one behind it had shaken out its entire back window!
Our base for our 2 nights on the island was a lovely National Park campground set in satinay (turpentine) and kauri rainforest. It had a few advantages over the beach camping areas - hot showers, individual sites set amongst the
tall trees, and an electric dingo fence! Fraser has a lot of dingos as most people know, but we only saw 3 over the 3 days we were there. The main pests we encountered at camp were butcher birds - they were so cheeky they would take food out of your hand if you weren’t looking! And some cheeky animal must smell good over there - I left my soap container out on the table overnight, in the morning the dish was on the ground and the soap had disappeared!
Once the sun went down it was very dark at camp as we only had a couple of lanterns, so we ended up lying in the tent listening to the All Blacks getting beaten by Australia on Blu’s wee transistor radio - one earplug each! It would have been a great place to stargaze with no nightlights nearby, but the rainforest in this area is dense and the trees so tall and straight, it is hard to see the sky through it.
The next day we set off early to explore the top half of the eastern beach- we knew we would have to be off the beach
by about 1pm as the tides would be too high after that. There are nice areas of coloured “rainbow” sandhills along the beach, good views from Indian Heads, and the shipwrecked remains of the Maheno. The funny thing is the beach is actually a Queensland road, and is regularly patrolled by the police - but parts of it are also an airstrip, so you have to watch out for planes as well! That afternoon and the next morning, we explored some more of the interior rainforest areas. Again, we were surprised how clear the rivers and lakes are - when I first saw Wanggoolba Creek, I thought it was either dry or muddy as all I could see was brown - you could see right through the water to the sand on the bottom!
Had another early night at camp and the next day we had a final blat up the beach before heading back to the barge - and a race against the incoming tide to get to Hook Point - we knew we had to get down as far as the high tide bypass road by about 1pm but the tide came in faster than we expected
and we ended up cutting it pretty fine. Had a few anxious minutes trying to find the entrance to the bypass and watching the water come closer to the car! A quick trip on the barge and we were back on the mainland again. After sorting out all our camping gear we were VERY tired that night! We both agreed that Fraser was a wonderful experience and a great place to visit.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.379s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 65; dbt: 0.1396s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Helen and Chris
non-member comment
Great photos
Hi Brian and Kate, We are enjoying reading all about your adventures and love the great photos. You sure are going to some beautiful places. You are proving that Aussie is more than dry sand and straight roads. The Sunshine coast is very beautiful. Continue to enjoy the warm weather. It is bloody cold here. We have had our share of rain for the winter. Looking forward to the next episode. Cheers Helen and Chris