Weekend in Noosa | Australia

I planned my Australia trip so long ago now that I can’t even remember how I learned about some of the places I decided to visit (besides the obvious ones like Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef). Somewhere along the way I learned about K’gari Island, or Fraser Island, as some still know it. As well as the beautiful beaches of the Noosa area. All of which are just a couple of hours north of Brisbane, where I’d just spent a few days and had to return to for my flight to the Red Centre. So with a couple of days spare, I picked up a rental car and headed off for a weekend in Noosa.

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Noosa

Noosa is the name given to an area of Queensland that encompasses a couple of towns, beaches and a national park. It took me a while to fathom out where was best to stay, but as usual, I ended up in a budget hostel option. I was staying in Sunshine Beach, on the other side of the national park from Noosa Heads, the most popular town in the region. I didn’t spend that much time in Sunshine Beach in the end though!

Noosa Heads

My weekend in Noosa started in the main town of Noosa Heads, after an hour’s drive up from Brisbane. It was very busy on a sunny Saturday morning! And it immediately felt like a rather glamorous spot to me, driving in over the waterways that criss-cross the town, past luxurious looking villas. After finding parking (eventually!) at Bay Village, I strolled along Hastings Street, a buzzing retail avenue lined with high-end boutiques and endless dining options. Lovely as they all looked, it was a bit pricey for my backpacker budget! So, after some window shopping I grabbed a corner shop lunch and took it down to the beach.

The beach was as busy as town, particularly since there was an event taking place today, some sort of rowing race. Dozens of long boats manned by teams of rowers lined the beach, taking turns to race out from shore and back again. I ended up listening to the commentator more than actually watching, as I lounged on the sand, sunbathing and eating my picnic lunch. It’s a pretty big beach, and as beautiful as many others in Australia, with its golden sand and clear, blue ocean. I lingered here until check-in was available at my hostel, ditching my luggage and the car there.

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Noosa National Park

From the hostel, I set out on foot into Noosa National Park. This is an area of headland between Noosa Heads and Sunshine Beach. Covered in native forest sprawled across coastal clifftops, it’s a great hiking location where I spent a couple of hours trekking. From Solway Drive, I took an inland track directly north across the park, hitting the coast around Tea Tree Bay Beach and Dolphin Point Lookout. Here, I soaked in those ocean views, waves crashing against the cliffs beneath my feet. As the name suggests, I was on the lookout for dolphins but wasn’t lucky enough to spot any.

Then I retraced my steps back inland due to part of the coastal track being closed for repairs. I met the sea again at the Fairy Pools. This is an outcrop of black rocks creating small saltwater pools. It looked a little tricky to climb down to and my walk was long enough already. So, I continued on, following the coast to Hell’s Gates. A dramatic name for somewhere so beautiful! The ocean was bright, dazzling turquoise as it surged into a narrow gap in the black cliffs. The lookout point also offers a stunning view to Alexandria Bay.

The track takes you down to the beach, where I kicked off my shoes and walked the length of the beach through the shallows of the water. It’s vast and isolated and so peaceful out here! Then I had one more ascent over the final headland, revealing an incredible view of Sunshine Beach. The colours were so vibrant in the sunlight and the beach is huge, stretching way down the coast into the distance. A long flight of stairs took me down to the sand, where I rested after my long walk before returning to the hostel.

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K’gari Island

Named Fraser Island by Europeans, K’gari is the island’s original name given to it by the Aboriginal people of the area, the Butchulla people. It’s the largest sand island in the world, which has earned it UNESCO World Heritage status. Covered in dense rainforest growing out of the sand (there’s no soil there!), it can only be accessed with 4-wheel-drive vehicles. You can take your own, but my rental car certainly wasn’t one, so I was joining a group tour for the day instead.

There are multi-day options too, where you stay overnight on the island, as you only explore a small portion of it in a single day! Tours typically depart from Hervey Bay or Rainbow Beach. Some offer pick-up in Noosa, but none of those companies run on Sundays oddly enough, so I had to drive myself to Rainbow Beach. Which was a very early morning for the 1.5-hour drive, to be there around 7.30am!

Lake McKenzie

After loading into the big 4WD bus, we drove the short distance to Inskip to take the ferry over to the island. Some people said they spotted dolphins on the crossing but I missed them! On K’gari, we offloaded straight onto the sand and began to drive around to the eastern side of the island. The ‘highway’ is the beach, but it was still high tide so we couldn’t access the entire length of Seventy-Five Mile Beach yet. Instead, we followed an inland track to our first destination, Lake Mckenzie.

This is one of the most popular sights on the island, which most tours will visit. It’s a ‘perched’ lake, meaning its filled by rainwater only with no stream or groundwater source. And being on a sand island, it has a natural beach all around it, which is a dazzlingly bright white silica. The sand naturally filters the water, making it incredibly clear and clean, though the lack of nutrients means little life exists in it. We spent about an hour here, plenty of time for swimming and sunbathing, and exfoliating your skin or cleaning jewellery with the silica! It was a little overcast as you’ll see in my pictures, but still a lovely spot.

Rainforest Walk

Next up, we continued driving inland through the dense forest that covers much of the island. Our driver-guide led us on a short rainforest walk, mainly following a boardwalk installed for this very purpose. He told us about the ecology of the island, as well as stories of the Butchulla people and how they used to live here (none remain now). Aside from a resort and some holiday accommodation, the island is largely uninhabited.

So, it was wonderful to get to explore such an ancient and unique ecosystem. To have an entire rainforest, especially one so large, growing on an island made entirely of sand, having adapted to survive here, is just incredible. And there was a freshwater stream flowing through it, which our guide explained makes it even more unique. The island also has a large population of dingos, a wild dog species found in Australia, and we spotted one wandering around the car park towards the end of our walk! Just another interesting facet to this island. I definitely got an appreciation for what a rare place K’gari is!

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Seventy-Five Mile Beach

We stopped at the resort’s restaurant for a buffet lunch and then continued our afternoon out on Seventy-Five Mile Beach. It stretches far up the island’s eastern coast, the ‘highway’ of sand between the forest and the ocean. Not that we had the time to drive all of it! Whizzing along the white sand, as the ocean crashed into the shore alongside us, I certainly felt like I was having quite the Australian adventure! Especially when we halted to look at a black snake on the sand, which our guide said was venomous. That’s definitely as close as I want to get to any of Australia’s deadly snakes – safely inside the bus!

We stopped to see the S.S. Maheno next, a shipwreck beached in the shallows. Its metal shell is falling apart and coated in a thick layer of rust, the reddish-brown creating quite the contrast against the bright blue ocean and sky. There’s also something quite striking about seeing this industrial, man-made structure slowly coming apart under the forces of nature. The ship’s career was actually already over when she was wrecked. She was being towed from Sydney to a shipwrecker’s yard in Japan when a cyclone cast her loose from the other ship. She washed aground here on K’gari, where she has remained since.

Just a bit further up the coast we also stopped to see the Pinnacles, a collection of sand dunes rising up behind the beach. They’re streaked in lines of orange, yellow, white and brown, like swirls of ice cream. According to the Aboriginal Dreamtime story that our guide told us, they are actually the remains of a rainbow serpent. It’s not a long stop to see them, but they’re a pretty sight to admire for a few moments!

Eli Creek

A few of our group left us to hop on a 10-minute scenic flight over the island (at extra cost). Being terrified of heights and small planes – who read my Vanuatu post? – I skipped this. But it was cool to see the little plane taking off and landing directly on the beach. The only other place in the world where planes are licensed to do this is the island of Barra, in Scotland!

Our final stop along the beachfront was Eli Creek, a popular swimming hole. Having already swum and changed at Lake McKenzie, I didn’t really want to deal with wet clothes or swimwear again at this point in the day. You can walk upstream along a wooden boardwalk, then most people get in the water and walk or drift back down if you’ve brought any sort of float. The water is shallow enough to walk the whole way but will come up to most people’s waists, hence the wet clothes! I waded through the creek near the beach (the only way to cross it and only knee-high), then walked along the boardwalk and back again to admire the views.

As we made our way back down the beach to the ferry crossing again, K’gari had one last surprise in store for us! We slowed to check out another dingo, a male this time, trotting down the beach. Then we stopped again to see more dingos – but this time, puppies! Our driver explained that a female had birthed a litter of three pups a few weeks ago and regular staff in the island have seen them a few times. We were lucky enough to see all three pups wandering on the beach and coming to take a look at our big, blue bus. An amazing ending to the day!

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Weekend in Noosa

My weekend in Noosa was certainly quick and pretty packed, since I had to head back to Brisbane for my flight to Ayers Rock airport the next morning. But I was glad I included it in my Australian itinerary as it was a really beautiful part of the country! Noosa National Park has some lovely scenery and then K’gari Island is such a special location. I had hesitated on booking the tour there, as it was one of the pricier activities on my entire trip! But I’m glad I did in the end as I now understand why it’s a UNESCO site and what makes it so unique. It was lovely to get to spend a few days out in nature, exploring Australia’s gorgeous scenery!