Noosa National Park

Last night I arrived in Noosa, a medium size town in the Sunshine Coast region of Australia. The sunshine coast is the coast region north of Brisbane. It's no longer considered to be part of North Queensland.  The sunshine coast is a pretty big tourist area, but not so busy as the southern beaches. Its far enough north to be warm, but its far enough south that you can actually swim in the ocean, which I think is pretty spectacular.

See in Townsville, and the northern parts of Queensland, you are often situated right on the beach, beautiful views and only a few hour boat journey from the great barrier reef, but the ocean is a bit taunting in the area. It's so hot, but you can't swim in the ocean because 1) salties (crocodiles, that actively hunt people and eat a confirmed 2 people, but estimated 20-30 people, a year) and 2) stingers (jelly fish that are about the size of a quarter, and a sting from them can send you into cardiac arrest). They do have nets in the water to allow people to swim in a few designated areas, but I personally have little faith that a net can keep a 15+ foot crocodile out and also will keep all the stingers out. The risk just does not seem to be worth a swim. Because of all that, I have understandably done little ocean swimming until today. Noosa is far enough south that you don't have to be worried about either of those, so to the beach I went. 

A quick 5 minute walk from my rental is the path to Noosa National Park. Its a beautiful seaside park with beach access and beautiful hiking trails. Overall the entire loop I did was about 7 miles, and up and down a few hills, for some reason. I did this hike knowing the distance before I left and still choosing to wear birks instead of hiking shoes, but that's tomorrow's regret. It was incredibly gorgeous, and I saw a bunch of sea turtles swimming off the shore. I stopped and took pictures of so many plants. I'm looking forward to figuring out what they all were, there are some really neat bottlebrush type plants, and grass trees, and all sorts of neat vegetation which I was enjoying looking at. 

 While I was looking for the wild koalas that are supposed to make the place home I was not so lucky. I was unfortunate enough to have a different sort of sighting though... nobody warned me when recommending the hike that the first beach I would come across was a nude beach. I walked my first mile, ready to come out on the beach, camera out, ready to take a picture of the ocean.... and I quickly put my camera away. Nude beaches seem to have one type of person, old men, who seem to make it an effort to be as close to the trail as possible so you cannot avoid them entirely. Anyway, I quickly got past the populated part of the beach and continued by journey, most of the beach was completely abandoned and it was very nice to walk down. I continued along to trail up to the top of some cliffs where I had a 200 degree view of the ocean. It was spectacular, further along my hike I found the normal beach with a few other backpackers and a number of surfers and spend a few hours swimming and enjoying the beautiful weather and chatting with some locals. I finished my loop through the dense forest, enjoying a quiet hike through a forest of multiple species of eucalyptus trees, as well as many others and made my way back to the rental.