Sunshine Coast & Hinterland
We stopped for two two nights at the Beerwah Sports Ground in the Glasshouse Mountains. It was a great budget caravan park except for the bird sh!t! I don’t know if we were just unlucky with our site, but our trailer and kitchen were covered in it. You couldn’t stop still long enough to tie your shoe laces without getting pooped on.
I’d expected the Glasshouse Mountains to be a range. Instead, they were are a series of volcanic plugs, protruding from the flat surrounding farmland or forestry. They reminded me of the Bagan temples in Myanmar. They looked more suited to rock climbing than hiking. We chose the popular and easy walk up Mount Ngungun for fabulous views. Matthias then scaled the much trickier Mount Tibrogargan.
In the afternoon we visited the town of Melany, sitting in an elevated vantage and offering a great view back to the mountains and the coast. We waited impatiently for a platypus to appear without luck and I posted my beloved hiking boots back to the manufacturer under a warranty claim. Perhaps they were never meant to be worn every day for 8 months straight, but I had expected better.
We made a dash into Noosa for the day and walked around the Headland of the small Noosa National Park walk. We were entertained by dolphins and excellent surfing and stopped for a swim at the lovely Tea Tree Bay beach.
We had an early dinner at the Surf Lifesaving Club which boasted unrivalled views of the main beach and a beautiful sunset. Noosa certainly didn't come across as a budget place to holiday and I got a taste of some of the incredible real-estate as I hiked up Bayview Drive on the returned walk to get the car. I should have left an hour earlier because the walk in the dark put the wind up me.
On a tip-off from a friend, we camped for two nights in Pomona so that we could climb nearby Mount Cooroora. We had a great view of the stand-alone domed peak from our campsite. Even the white scar of the track running vertically up to the summit was visible. As promised, it was an unforgettable climb and a favourite with the kids. It was only 1.1km up, but it took us two hours of near vertical rock climbing. Coming down was a bit hairy, particularly as Claire, who was a mountain goat on the way up, seemed to have lost any sense of precaution on the descent. Plus, a group of school kids, in a hurry to get down, sent lose rocks bouncing down around us.
We dined with some of the camp's colourful permanent residents (short-term guests seemed to be in the minority at the park), who invited us to tuck into the freezer full of free "urban angels" ready meals and bread. It seemed the affluence of the coastal Noosa strip wasn't shared by the fringing inland towns.
With wet weather on the horizon, we chose to head further inland for a night at Cedar Grove Camp in Amamoor State Forest. I’d been dubious about the choice, but was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a peaceful hideaway, alive with birdsong and with a shallow creek to keep the kids entertained. We took it in turns to do the 5km circuit walk and after sunset did the short rainforest walk in the dark with the kids. We spyied the occasional unfamiliar marsupial and plenty of ring and brush tailed possums.
