Today we took ourselves off on a day trip to Noosa Heads, just a couple of hours north of Brisbane, to take the new car for a decent drive and to see what there was to explore in Noosa. Our previous experience of Noosa was a quick stop for lunch on the way through to Brisbane with Jen’s folks almost eighteen months ago and we were keen to see what else there was to offer except for the underground food court.

When we arrived the first issue was finding somewhere to park as the Easter crowds had gathered in force and local policemen were stationed at every roundabout to try to ease the congestion around the town. We continued on passed the high street and headed instead for the national park entrance just over a kilometre away only to find that it too was full of people like us trying to find somewhere to leave their car. Luckily just as we were completing our second lap somebody was leaving their space, although it could be debated as to whether a patch of dirt by the side of a building actually constitutes a parking space. Whereas in times gone by, old Brucey had scraped the floor on the mildest of dips, Fergal was up and over the kerb no problems at all. It was already proving its worth!!

We headed to the information centre just inside the park entrance to grab a map and then set off along the coastal track. We hadn’t got very far along the path when we came across a small group of people pointing excitedly into a tree and as we looked up we saw something that until now, we had refused to believe existed – a koala in the wild! Not only were we encountering our very first wild koala, but it was actually awake and moving around a damn site more than any others that we had seen in the many zoos and sanctuary’s that we have visited. Judging by its size (it definitely didn’t go hungry very often) and the markings on its fur it must have been quite old and was climbing sluggishly along until it found a suitably comfortable spot to rest itself in a fork of one of the branches.

After some time we continued along the path and just around the corner it came out into a clearing where we could see the coastline snaking around towards the headland away to our left. As we walked on we passed a number of shady rest areas where people were taking in the views and others with surfboards were clambering down through seemingly impassable scrub to try to get their own area of space on the water. Further still we came to a small beach that was covered in people that had presumably found the main beach in the town too busy and had come here to get away from the crowds?

After another kilometre or so we reached Hell’s Gate – a rocky inlet and the point at which we were to turn around – where the wind was so strong that we could lean into it quite a way and it stopped us from falling over. After several shouted conversations that neither of us could hear due to the gale blowing around us we started back along the path in the direction from which we had come.

The koala was still drawing crowds when we got back near the park entrance (we overheard one Australian woman saying that she had never seen one in the wild before this and she had been here for many years so we felt very smug at our good fortune) and we headed on towards the town centre along a wooden walkway that again followed the coastline. The main beach was absolutely heaving and we could see why so many people had headed to the smaller beaches in the National Park as we continued on into town in search of food.

We found a nice bar that offered (rather curiously) a “Do It Yourself BBQ” where they brought out some side salads and a streak and it was over to you to cook it on the balcony BBQ. We settled for sandwiches! After our spot of lunch it was time to start our journey back to Brissy so it was back along the walkway yet again and then we were off.

On the journey back we took a slight detour near the Glass House Mountains to find a gravel track to make sure there were no problems with the four wheel drive on the car. There weren’t. Just a big cloud of dust behind us!!