Noosa: Adventures on the Northern Sunshine Coast

Noosa, a bustling beach resort on the north end of the Sunshine Coast, is actually the name that a cluster of smaller towns—among them, Noosa Heads and Noosaville—go by. Noosa Heads is the town that most people would call "Noosa", since this is where Hastings Street, Main Beach, and the Noosa National Park are located.One of the best things about Noosa is the fact that buildings can only be built a maximum of five stories tall. This means that nothing can get as absurdly built up as the Gold Coast, which features all the high rises you'd ever want (or not want) to see—everything here seems to be tastefully and stylishly built, as opposed to glaringly commercial. The Noosa North Shore goes one further in only having access via ferry across the Noosa River, making transportation a bit slow and therefore stifling nearly all development (and therefore ruining) of the coast there.Hastings Street, the main street from which you can access Main Beach, definitely has plenty to offer. There are restaurants and cafes everywhere (apparently about 1/4 of the dining that Noosa has to offer in total), and they cater to people of every budget. There are also cute little specialty shops and larger chains such as bookstores to browse through. You can definitely get all the Sunshine Coast and Noosa souvenirs you want here. And, as a surprise, we saw a garden gnome in one of the shop windows—apparently Amelie's gnome has made it all the way around the world to little ol' Noosa.Noosa offers plenty in the way of activities, as well. The Noosa National Park is a large reserve that sticks out into the water, complete with wild koalas! There is hiking through the trees, along with swimming and surfing in many areas surrounding it. Noosa Heads offers Main Beach along with some more secluded cove areas; the North Shore offers a 40 mile long beach where you can camp as well—just watch out for the cars, since it's a government designated road! This is the road we took from Noosa to Rainbow Beach. If surfing and swimming aren't enough, the Noosa river is also a nice recreation area where you can kayak and windsurf, among other things.If all that isn't enough, you can always head slightly inland and see the Glass House Mountains, Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, or the Big Pineapple!

Quick Tips:

As always, make sure that you book well in advance if you are planning on staying here, especially during holidays. Noosa is a very popular getaway and fills up rather quickly, being rather small and not offering a huge number of hostels (I'm not sure about higher budget accommodation, but I'm sure it's the same). We ended up in Noosa without reservations when our hostel lost ours, and luckily managed to grab up the last three beds in another hostel—otherwise, we would have been in for a very interesting night attempting to find somewhere to sleep.If you are travelling here as a day trip from Brisbane, make sure you leave plenty of time. On public transport, the trip takes a good 3 hours (if you take the express), so to get anything useful in at all in Noosa you'll want to leave early in the morning and take a late train home. It's worth it to stay here a night or two so as to not worry about transportation nearly as much.Noosa is also a great starting point for trips up to Fraser Island. Many tours are based in Noosa and include transportation to and from the island along 40 mile beach, which is well worth seeing. There are also places to rent 4 wheel drives (40 mile beach and the whole of Fraser are only accessible with one of these) in Noosa as well.

Best Way To Get Around:

Getting around Noosa Heads is pretty easy on foot—you simply wander down Hastings Street. It's not a bad walk to the beaches or the National Park either. We took a bus to our hostel, which was in Noosaville and seemed to be a bit of a drive. There were plenty of buses picking up from the bus stop where we got dropped off, so if you are planning on staying in Noosa, give your accommodation a call and let them know when you would like a bus.Getting to Noosa by car from Brisbane is pretty simple—just get on the Bruce Highway (the main highway between Brisbane and Cairns), and follow the signs to Noosa. This only takes 1½ to 2 hours, depending on when you are leaving Brisbane (beware, if you leave during peak hours, especially right before a long weekend or during the holidays, you could be in for a long wait in traffic in Brisbane itself before you even make it to the Bruce).Getting to Noosa via public transport took considerably longer. To get there from our apartment in Brisbane, we had to first catch a bus in to Queen Street, walk over to Adelaide Street and Central Station, catch the express (make sure it's the express—it makes a huge difference) train to Nambour, and then catch the bus in Nambour to Noosa. The whole process took us at least 3 hours, and probably closer to 3½ hours before we actually made it to the bus stop in Noosa. From there we had to wait some more for the hostel bus. So, while Noosa is relatively close to Brisbane, it is still just far away enough to make it a rather long day trip if you try to squeeze in everything in between 6 or 7 hours of transportation.

Best Things Nearby:
Lake Cootharaba itself and the Apollonian Hotel are the main attractions.

Best Things About the Resort:
Its easy access to Lake Cootharaba.

Resort Experience:
Our biggest UQ Sailing Club trip of the year was our camping trip to Lake Cootharaba. We stayed at the campgrounds at Boreen Pt during this trip, since they had a large enough beach to hold our boats and were very close to the town of Boreen Point itself, even though the town was quite small.The campgrounds were very inexpensive, although the exact price was part of our trip fee so I don't know exactly how much they were. The fee couldn't have been more than about $7 or $8 a person for a spot on the grounds. Obviously, we brought our own tents to pitch, and it's pretty much first-come, first-serve as to what camping spot you get. Our group was split into two distinct camping areas because there wasn't enough room in one spot, but this was understandable since there were quite a number of us. After we had completely pitched our tent, we were told by someone posing as an authority that we were going to have to move our tent by 7am because someone else had our campground; we're not sure how they felt they could tell us this, however, when we later found out that you cannot actually booking camping spots, we moved our tent so as to not cause trouble anyways.The main UQ Sail camping area had a barbecue in it, so we were able to cook breakfast that morning. There was also a very large covered barbecue area with a couple electric barbecues, a large counter area, and lots of tables; we used this to cook sausages for lunch both days.The bathrooms were typical campground bathrooms, with huge signs saying they use bore (underground) water, which is not drinkable. This is why the sinks and toilets were slightly brown—not because they were unclean, but because the water gives them this tinge. The shower water got extremely hot extremely quickly—this felt very good after a couple hours bathing in lukewarm lake water when it wasn't the middle of the summer!The campsite was very conveniently located, only a very short walk from the Apollonian Hotel and the main store in town if you took a shortcut by the camp entrance. My friend and I took the longer way around through some forest, and it still didn't take us that long at all. There isn't a whole lot at Boreen Point, since there's only about 200 people that live there, so it's best to buy supplies before you get here.I really enjoyed camping here, although the one thing the campsite did lack is the kangaroos hopping between the tents like in the next campsite along the lake had!

• Campground Type: State/Province Park
• Campsite Type: Tent
• Price Range: $0 - $10
• Cleanliness: Excellent
• Campground Facilities: Very Good
• Recreational Facilities: Excellent
• Campsite Satisfaction: Excellent
• Family Friendliness: Satisfactory
• Service: Very Good

When we arrived in Noosa in the evening before our trip to Fraser Island, we expected to have a dorm room. We also expected a bus that we had been told met the bus from Nambour. After waiting outside the bus stop for at least 15 minutes, my friend called our hostel (not Noosa Backpackers—can't remember the name now, sadly) and asked where our shuttle was. They informed her that they did not have our reservations and there were no vacancies.At this point, we became a bit frantic. Luckily, there was a couple waiting for a bus as well that were actually on our same Fraser tour, which actually operates out of the hostel they were staying at, the Noosa Backpackers Resort. When their bus arrived, we asked the driver if there were any vacancies. He wasn't sure, but he offered to take us to the hostel so we could see.When we arrived, we were told that there weren't three beds together, but there were three scattered across the hostel, so we took them. My room was a plain four bed dorm, right across the hallway from the bathrooms, which were reasonably clean and featured a couple toilets and a shower. We had to use our own sleeping bags on the bed, which was OK since we had brought them along for our trip to Fraser. There was a large outside area where you could sit around or go into the adjacent kitchen. The kitchen was large and featured all the utensils that you need for cooking, but it irritatingly did not offer any plates or bowls. Apparently you have to pay the hostel for a set to use for your meal—I nearly got shot by a fellow backpacker when I accidentally took his plate, thinking it was public domain. My friend and I ended up eating my ramen out of the strainer.We didn't use many of the other facilities that the hostel offered, including free boogie boards and kayaks, and an Internet cafe, because we arrived so late in the evening and were setting off fairly early the next morning.We were not at the hostel for very long but there were no real problems we could find with it… until about a week later. This was about the time that my roommate pulled a louse off of her head. We're not sure whether this came from the hostel or the beach house that we stayed in on Fraser Island, but there's a good chance it was from the Backpackers Resort, since we all stayed in separate rooms and my roommate is the only one that got them. Also, there is a higher incidence of bugs in hostels where backpackers bring their own bedding. Wherever they came from, they were obviously not a welcome visitor. So a word of caution, bring your own pillow and wash it well afterwards if you stay here. The hostel was convenient for our tour, but this convenience wasn't worth the lice combing!

The Apollonian Hotel is a nice country pub situated in Boreen Point, a tiny town on the shores of Lake Cootharaba. The town is only a 20km drive north of Noosa, and the lake is its main attraction, bringing in water lovers (especially sailors) from all over the state.

We went to the Apollonian Hotel on the Saturday night we spent at the lake. The pub has a setup largely based around the beer garden in the back--the counter where you can place your orders for food and the bar both open into the beer garden. I remember there being some places to eat indoors, but our group sat outside, taking up the farthest three or four benches in the back of the garden. There was also another room in the pub, with pool tables and another bar, but this seemed to be frequented by older men, so we didn't spend much time in there.

There were plenty of people around the pub on the Saturday night we were there, and there was definitely a lot of buzz around the place. I had to wait for a long time to even place my order, but with only one woman taking orders at the counter and a large group like ours coming in, it was to be expected. Everything on the menu was reasonably priced for pub food, although I don't remember the exact prices--I probably paid around $10, if that, for a meal. The drinks were more expensive than say, a 2-for-1 night at the RE in Brisbane, but not too bad when you shared a jug of beer with others.

I cannot remember what I ate here, but I am fairly certain it was a steak of some description. I don't remember the food being exceptional, but it was definitely good and better than anything I could have cooked for myself at the campsite! One interesting thing they offered here was kangaroo, which I didn't try on the advice of some people that had been to the pub many times, since they said that kangaroo meat is tough to begin with, and even more so here.

One thing I particularly associate with my visit to the Apollonian: my first experience with cane toads. Cane toads are the annoying little buggers that were introduced to eat some pests that were killing off sugar cane. Unfortunately, the person introducing them didn't realize that the pests lived at the top of the cane, so the toads couldn't kill the pests and soon became the pest themselves. Nothing can kill these things, except, of course, a nice round car tire or a golf club, since they are poisonous. Queenslanders absolutely hate these things, which we definitely noticed when some of the Aussies in our group attempted to chase down and kill the few live toads we saw.

Overall, the Apollonian is a great place to spend a Saturday night, which is good, since there aren't many alternatives in Boreen Point!

Lake Cootharaba is a brilliant little lake nestled in the Great Sandy National Park just north of Noosa. Only a 20km drive away from the Noosa area, it's definitely worth a trip, especially if you are a fan of any sort of water sport.

I went to Lake Cootharaba as part of a camping weekend with the UQ Sailing Club. We arrived there on Saturday morning and left on Sunday evening, and even though there were a lot of people there, we managed to get a lot of time on the lake.

I had never sailed before this weekend, and Cootharaba was a great place to get started. There was nice wind the entire time, not too much but enough to keep a sailboat moving. The best part of the lake is the fact that even though it's at least 10km long and probably half that wide, it never seems to get deeper than a meter and a half--which is convenient for when you capsize, yet deep enough to let you put down your centreboard and rudder.

I spent a bit of time out on the lake on a Getaway, a very easy to sail catamaran. The other boat I spent a fair amount of time on was slightly more interesting, being a one-hulled Laser. My friend and I decided that, neither of us having much experience, it would be a brilliant idea to take this boat out.

What ensued was highly amusing. We managed to sail in lines back and forth for a little while around the centre of the lake, but we couldn't get our rudder to go down, so steering was rather interesting. When we finally got the rescue boat to come over, their engine stopped responding to their gassing it, until finally it responded all at once, and all of a sudden, their rescue boat was on the back of ours. I lost all control of the rudder, and before we knew it, we were all swimming (minus the guy who actually ran the boat onto ours!). This is when my friend and I found out that the middle of the lake is indeed only chest deep, although slightly deeper if you count how deep your legs sink into the mud. Luckily, we finally got our rudder fixed and were on our way.

Our next capsize was even more amusing, and totally our fault. We were proud that, after sailing for nearly two hours, we had only capsized once and it wasn't our fault at all. We had actually done a half decent job of seeing the lake as well. Unfortunately, when we tried to come back in to our camping place at Boreen Pt, we had to gybe, which we found considerably more difficult. Our attempt to do so went well until I got tangled up in the main sheet, and, in attempting to switch sides of the boat, took the whole boat with me! Again, we found ourselves floating, knee deep in mud, except this time we were in full view of the shore and everyone relaxing on it. Luckily, the people there were either beginners or not paying attention to us at all.

Even better than our second capsize was the fact that my friend helped me get in the boat, turned it around, and then let her go with me on it. Apparently I looked totally confused as she waved goodbye and began walking towards shore, while the wind picked me up and took me away. Soon I was sailing at a fair clip straight at the shore. I knew that one way to stop a boat was to turn it into the wind--but apparently I tried this too quickly, because I had soon flipped the boat for a third time, except this time I was exceptionally close to shore and there were plenty people to laugh at me (including my friend, who was nearly in tears behind me!).

While a bit waterlogged by the end of the day, I really enjoyed my time out on the lake and found that being with someone else that was totally lost too was the best way to learn. The lady that had lent us her boat said that we did quite well, although I don't know how much of that was her just being happy that the boat was in one piece, albeit with slightly more mud on the sail. I had a blast on this trip though, and it definitely inspired me to go sailing again--although sailing on Moreton Bay was slightly more difficult (and it always makes it interesting when people tell you stories about swimming away from sharks!).

When we arrived back in Noosa from our Fraser Island tour, we just barely missed the bus to Nambour, meaning we had to wait in Noosa for 3 1/2 hours before the next one left. We obviously didn't want to spend that much time at the bus stop, which was not all that interesting to begin with, so we wandered into Noosa Heads.It was around 4pm on a public holiday afternoon, so what little that was open was getting ready to close shortly. We did wander around a few small shops and a bookshop, but this was mainly out of necessity to hide from what we thought was a rainstorm. After the spitting rain stopped, we headed to Noosa's main beach, partly because we knew we couldn't get kicked out of it and partly because I hadn't seen it before.We didn't actually go swimming at the beach, since we didn't have any clean, dry clothes to change into afterwards for the long journey back to Brisbane, so we just dumped our stuff, pulled out our towels, and got out our books. There weren't too many people on the beach, especially in the area we had camped out in, since we were a fair distance from the swimming flags. Soon the flags got taken down and the beach emptied out even more.The weather wasn't the best—it kept spitting with rain and threatening to do more. We felt bad for the sand artist that had created a dolphin and a mermaid out of sand (with surprising accuracy), since every rain drop was eating away at his masterpiece. We never actually saw the person that created them, but he probably wasn't nearly as bothered as we were, since he probably makes them every day.The bit of a chill that the rain gave us (it always seemed like it was about to start pouring… but never actually did) was worth it to see the sunset that we saw. This was definitely one of the most brilliant sunsets I have ever seen, over a location that is beautiful to start with. We had abandoned the beach for the rain but soon came back when we saw the color the sky was turning, and this was definitely a good choice. The rainclouds were lit a brilliant orange and yellow, and then slowly faded to reds and purples over the span of about 15 minutes or so. Every shot we got of it showed the sky as being a slightly different, but equally as beautiful, color. The colors of the sky lit up everything, turning the sand a reddish color and twinkling on the surf. We definitely couldn't believe our luck, in happening to be on the beach that evening, and the number of photos that we took certainly proved it!The only thing that left me sad about this short layover in Noosa was that I didn't have time to explore Noosa National Park, part of which is the area that juts out to the south of Noosa's main beach. My friends had visited it earlier in the year when I was in New Zealand and enjoyed both the scenery and the chance to see wild koalas (the only difference here is that the koalas sleep in trees not owned by a wildlife refuge).