Australia - The sunshine coast

We had heard many good things about the sunshine coast and especially Noosa, from not only travelers, but locals to. It seems that the Gold Coast, which is further south on the other side of Brisbane, has a negative reputation with large high-rises, casinos, drink, drugs and lots of tourists and the Sunshine coast is the better beach area. So we sacrificed an extra day on Fraser Island and drove the couple of hours south when we got back from our day trip.

The sunshine coast

Our choice of accommodation (again) was an Air BnB just outside Noosa Heads, with our host this time an ex opal miner who has decided to open a chocolate shop... intriguing! The room was nice and having arrived late, we got (another) $5 pizza (£2.50!) from Domino's (bad but so so cheap!).

Noosa is a well set up tourist town, there are beautiful beach houses (with private mornings on the river), a good range of restaurants, boutiques, an excellent beach, an interesting national park and surf. No wonder this is a popular place! We very easily settled into lazing on the beach, eating ice creams and chilling out.

Noosaville's riverside apartments

The National Park is well worth a visit, with well maintained walking routes around the coast and through the forest. On the coastal stretch there are multiple surf breaks so you are more than likely to come across a few surfers wondering along with their surf boards. If just going along the coastal path you could probably get away with flip flops, but the forest area you would need better shoes. In any case we did the circuit in about 2 hours (be wary of the car parking restrictions and get there early as car parking is very limited and fills up... fast!).

A stroll through the National Park

After a few nice days in Noosa it was time to move on, so we booked another AirBnB further down the coast in Mooloolaba. The beach is vast and quite open. This is probably why people like Noosa as it is more sheltered. However, the sand is beautiful (if a bit hot!).

Mooloolaba didn't have much going for it when compared to Noosa, so if you are coming this way, I would say to go to Noosa and forget about the rest of the coast.

The Sunshine Coast was really nice, and if you have time in the area it is worth a stop.