The Top 5 Beaches In The World
Driving the Great Barrier Reef from Gold Coast to Cairns
The next town on the north side of Brisbane is called Sunshine Coast, which should not be confused with the similarly named town in BC, nor the town named Gold Coast (to the South of Brisbane). Since the entire eastern Australian seaboard is sandy beaches, it goes without saying that it is generally pretty sunny.
One of the interesting hikes to do in the area is in the Glass Mountains Park, which contains a series of 11 prominent peaks. The peaks are not volcanoes but are remains of molten rock that filled small vents beneath the surface and eventually solidified into rock. When the surrounding land is eroded away, the volcanic cores are what remain. It’s hard to believe that all of the ground eroded some 200m to leave these peaks exposed.
Mt Ngungun is the easiest hike to do, with the most rewarding view. It is only 253m in elevation, so it took us about 20 minutes to reach the top. The view from the top is quite expansive, but there’s not a lot to see below other than flat lands and a few surrounding hills.
After a while hanging out on the top, it got too hot to stay any longer so it was a good idea to head down back into the forest, where there’s a little bit of shade.
A gentleman at the tourist information center recommended that we visit some nearby waterfalls. Both Kondalilla Falls and Mapleton Falls were a disappointment. The falls were quite distant, so there was no good vantage point to view them or take photos. Compared to waterfalls in Canada, they were little more than a trickle.
We found people swimming in murky brown pools and realized how fortunate we are in Canada to have crystal clear water. We grew up with it, treating it as a norm, but there are few places in the world that have clear water like BC.
The best part about our three days in Sunshine Coast didn’t even take place in the town itself. Instead, it was an area located an hour north, called Noosa Heads. Having visited a rather uninteresting Saturday craft market in Eumundi (it’s supposedly the largest market in the southern hemisphere), we headed up to Noosa Heads based on our AirBnB host’s recommendation.
We thought our host was directing us to the mouth of the Noosa River, but she actually had somewhere else in mind. Though we didn’t see what she had told us to, we lucked out with parking near the beach and spent a few hours there. The coast is full of great surfs but the river is as calm as a lake. The sandy beach drops off in depth quite quickly, which gives rise to warm upper currents and cool lower currents. You can see in the photos where the drop off is — where the colour of the water turns from brownish to blue.
The beach was quite enjoyable because were able to frolic in the warm shallows and jump into the cool depths. Yuki declared that it was one of the top 5 beaches that we’ve been to. We then decided that the other four are Bonaire and Curacao for the amazing snorkeling, Akumal Bay for the giant sea turtles, and Hua Hin for the sunrise — at least for now. Little did we know that we were about to experience the best beach in the world soon…
Noose Heads Beach doesn’t exist without danger though. As we were leaving, we saw a rescue helicopter come and hover over a man in the surf. As we watched from shore, I thought it was disheartening that the helicopter was circling over him — yet there were so many people with boats and ski-doos in the river, just 300m away, that could have provided help if they knew what was going on. Eventually he made it back towards shore and a boat picked him up. It looked like he’d lost his kayak.
Along the way back to Sunshine Coast, we drove along the coastline. Even though there is a Pacific Coastal Highway, it’s actually pretty far from the coast. Even the coastal route we took wasn’t right along the coast like it is in Oregon, but it did have some nice viewpoints that we stopped at for photos.
