This final post from my visit to Noosa comprises of images and activities over a number of days during my visit, activities that perhaps didn’t warrant a post of their own but are still worth sharing.
Urban Jungle
Noosa is a botanist’s paradise, with dense vegetation colourful flowers growing everywhere, including on the verges of some of the main roads around town. Footpaths are generally placed back from the road, winding through shady glades and even patches of urban jungle.
Some of the plants, like the ubiquitous poinciana trees with their red flowers, I recognised from my travels in SE Asia. Others, like banksia and grass trees, are familiar across most of Australia. But many were quite unfamiliar to me – please feel free to illuminate me in the comments if you recognise them.
Laguna Lookout
A short distance up Noosa Hill from either Noosa Junction or Main Beach is Laguna Lookout, offering views across the town, river and heads.
Noosa Woods
Keep walking along the chintzy commercialism of Hastings Street and you’ll find Noosa Woods, a reserve of waterfront parkland and tracks that lead around the Sound and out to the mouth of the river at the end of Main Beach.
Sunset over Noosa Waters
Tanglewood Track
Once my angle was back to its usual robust self, I took some more walks. My favourite was the one I took through the Noosa National Park (having already completed the Coastal Track early in my visit).
From the main visitor centre in the park I firstly walked the short Rainforest Track, a short circle of a kilometre or so. By then I was just warmed up, so headed off again along the Tanglewood Track, which leads from the visitor centre to the point at Hell’s Gates, through a variety of landscapes.
There are plenty of options to take shorter walks to Noosa Junction or Sunshine Beach but I chose to walk all the way back out to the headland at Hell’s Gates. From here I could have headed south along the wide stretch of sand at Alexandria Bay, but I decided to head back along the Coastal Track to Main Beach, the opposite direction to which I’d walked previously.
All up I enjoyed a wonderful couple of weeks in Noosa, and in delightful and very comfortable circumstances. It’s not somewhere that I had ever considered visiting, but having the time to explore as well as relax and get to know the area on its own terms was rewarding.
