Travel

Enjoy the low-rise condos at Noosa

Currently, Noosa, population 42,000, is a sophisticated beach resort whose center is leafy, boutique-lined Hastings Street. Low-rise designer condos, with whirlpools on almost every balcony, have replaced the candid holiday units. Alfresco cafes outlook the grassy slopes behind Main Beach. The campground at the end of Hastings Street has vanished, replaced by native bush.

Yet the cinder-block Noosa Heads Surf Lifesaving Club still stands gloriously amid million-dollar beachfront homes. At ground level, a first-aid station ministers to bluebottle stings and sunburn, while anyone is welcome to have a beer upstairs in the bar and adore the tennis star Pat Rafter’s U.S. Open sneakers proudly mounted on the wall. The deck views across the magnificent sweep of Laguna Bay, to 40 miles of golden beaches in the Cooloola National Park stretching to the horizon.

If you are visiting Noosa you must try and book your accommodation at Sheraton Noosa Resort And Spa, It’s the best accommodation in town.

To the east, across Noosa National Park, Alexandria Bay looks exactly as it did on my first stay. Though the town is transformed, enough of the surrounding beaches and hinterland have been protected to suggest that Noosa has struck an noteworthy balance between development and preservation.

But for a troop of dedicated environmentalists, Noosa could have ended up like the Gold Coast, 150 miles to the south, a jumble of skyscrapers, highways and theme parks blotting out what had once been a magical coastline. In addition to threats by sand miners and loggers, the area faced a proposal to establish a highway around the coastline of the Noosa National Park to serve a proposed resort on Alexandria Bay. In the mid-1980’s, a development was proposed for saving the land next to Cooloola National Park that would have included a 600-room hotel, two resorts, a 27-hole golf course, an artificial lake, a marina and an airport.

Noosa remains a haven for everyone

The Noosa National Park remains a haven for strollers, bird-viewers and surfers, its scalloped bays taming the unruly Pacific Ocean into well-mannered waves. Noosa offers some of the best peak breaks anywhere, and on a good day, surfers come for miles to ride the waves all the way from Granite Bay in the national park into Main Beach. An international long board festival is held here every March.

On calm days, kayakers streak crossing the bay from Main Beach to the park’s many coves. Observant walkers mayt spot koalas perched sleepily in the crooks of eucalyptus trees, and pods of bottlenose dolphins are regularly seen from the coastal track.

Little Cove manifests the balance of Noosa. This quiet nook of a fine sandy beach surrounding the corner from Hastings Street on Laguna Bay is backed with scraggly trunked paper bark trees, perfect for hanging beach towels. The pandanus-framed, open-air shower — excellent for washing off salty bodies and surfboards — offers what may be the best shower view anywhere just two minutes’ walk from an iced latte on Hastings Street.

On the north of the Noosa River, the Cooloola National Park stretches over 270 square miles (nearly the size of New York’s five boroughs), with aqua lakes perched high in sand dunes and the ocher kaleidoscope of the vibrant sand cliffs, as well as the lush rain forest and everglades of the Noosa River and its tidal lakes. Once the source of an Aboriginal dreamtime legend about the dying rainbow serpent leaving its shape and colors into the land, Cooloola is now being discussed as a possible World Heritage site, to join neighbor Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island, on Unesco’s list.

An exciting way to explore this region is to take a cruise from Noosaville up the Noosa River into the Everglades. Upstream, the tannins from the surrounding malaleuca, or “tea,” trees stain the water brown causing in mirrorlike reflections. The cruises continue towards the Lakes Cooroibah and Cootharaba for swimming, trail strolling and a barbecue lunch. On some days, tours continue on to the dramatic cliffs of colored sands along Teewah Beach and visit the Cherry Venture shipwreck before returning along the 40-mile beach in four- wheel drive vehicles.

Noosa has managed to keep its buildings no higher the tree line

Squeezed between these two wilderness bookends, the village of Noosa has managed for the most part to keep its buildings no higher than the tree line. A community of boardwalks goes all over: along Main Beach, past Little Cove to Noosa National Park, up to Laguna Lookout.

The Noosa Shire Council hasn’t always shied away from “developing” on nature, however. In the 1970’s, the town allowed a developer to drain and clear a mangrove swamp near the river’s estuary to create a canal housing development. Storm erosion has become a problem, and Main Beach periodically disappears, but creamy river sand is oftentimes reapplied like lipstick.

Still, one person’s environmental encroachment is another’s waterfront views. Today, visitors can select between a beach-front penthouse on Hastings Street, a perch amid the eucalyptus trees on Little Cove, an airy shuttered house with boat moorings on Noosa Sound or a Noosa Hill apartment with a drop-dead view of Laguna Bay.

Hastings Street has progressed into a classy shopping street shaded with wispy poinciana trees. The boutiques are full of fasioned casual clothes and Aussie swimsuits and surfing gear. There are lots of ice cream parlors but not a fast-food chain or tacky souvenir shop in sight; those are reserved for nearby Noosa Junction.

Restaurants offer local ingredients from the sea and the hinterland — reef and river fish, prawns, duck, beef, mangoes, avocado, macadamia nuts, ginger — in dishes as clever as this season’s Billabong board shorts. Yet, the local fish-and-chip shop still gives takeout meals, wrapped in paper, that can be enjoyed on a shaded grassy knoll by Main Beach.

Zest the greeny picnic areas and cafe scenes in Noossa

Well-heeled residents of Sydney and Melbourne decamp to Noosa every school vacations, and while many regulars often don’t go farther than Main Beach and Little Cove and the shops and restaurants of Hastings Street, the natural environment sets Noosa’s tone. During morning and late afternoon, river and ocean beaches are dotted with fishermen. Early morning joggers and surfers head out to the national park, and the blue Noosa River beckons with its own calm sandy beaches, greeny picnic areas and cafe scene.

There are boats for hire — from catamarans to idiosyncratic fishing crafts like “tinnies” (small runabouts with outboard motors) or flat-bottomed pontoons with built-in barbecues — for meandering around the river’s estuary and canals. A popular destination is the Frying Pan, near the estuary’s north shore. It is an ideal spot to begin dune walks to the ocean beach before a boating barbecue, possibly of freshly caught whiting, bream or bass, but you’ll have to compete with the pelicans.
Inland from the transparent coastal waters, the lush landscape gives exotic vistas as well as vignettes of traditional country life interspersed with New Age culture. Twenty minutes’ drive west from Noosa, the country town of Eumundi showcases this mix at its Wednesday and Saturday markets. From open-air stalls under gum trees, vendors offer fairy dress-ups and natural cotton clothing alongside fresh mangoes and avocados. Healing crystals and organic jams are wedged between traditional Akubra felt hats, Australian hardwood cutting boards and colorful hand-painted pottery.

A little drive south on Highway 1, the Thai-inspired Spirit House offers an exotic lunch setting: open-air pagodas around a fern-fringed pond. The nearby Buderim Ginger Factory has been producing much ginger products than one could imagine, including crystallized and pickled ginger, for over 60 years. (The ginger ice cream is irresistible.) A historic train meanders around the rain forest and gardens to display visitors how this delicacy is grown.

The Mapleton turnoff will give you 20 minutes’ drive down Highway 1, past sugar cane fields. The road winds up into volcanic hills whose red earth feeds fat dairy cows. Their well-off milk ends up in the clotted cream at high tea in Montville, a curious amalgam of English cottages and Bavarian chalets, which double as craft shops.

If that sounds too kitschy, you can simply zest the waterfalls and rain forest at nearby Kondalila Falls or marvel at the spectacular coastal sites on the way back to Highway 1 and Noosa to grab the last wave before sunset over Laguna Bay.

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