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Upon leaving Brisbane, we headed straight for Noosa to begin our next phase of holiday. We eventually found a decent cabin in Tewantin at the Big 4 camp ground, which was cheaper than the double rooms in the backpacker hostels and also came with bed linen (the Koala Backpackers was a little more expensive and, we were told upon arriving there, required us to bring our own sleeping bags – the YHA, where Anna stayed, was nice, but a little more expensive also).

Noosa is an upmarket seaside town with many cafes and restaurant aimed at the more affluent end of the market roughly interspersed with “high quality” souvenir shops, bookshops and other expensive oddities. Further up the hill, away from the beach a little, is Noosaville, which caters more for the budget backpackers market with a number of bars and more inexpensive restaurants and budget accommodation.

The first morning we were at Noosa we went for a walk into the National Park at Noosa Heads in an attempt to find an as yet elusive Koala and to have a walk before spending the rest of the day on the beach trying to forget about our hectic city working life.

This park is a good place to visit and there are three paths available, none of which are overly difficult to negotiate and are well signposted. We took, as usual, the middle way which went around most of it in a couple of hours.

On the first section, you are flanked by the ocean on one side, and the forest on the other. The views here are pretty good, and we watched some of the best surfing I have seen so far on our trip.

The end of the coastal path comes at “Hells Gates” where the ocean has made an impressive slice into the mainland.

As the name suggests, the swell here is pretty rough, and I was surprised to see three crazy surfers riding the waves at this place. As the waves break directly onto the rocks, with a fair amount of force, the surfers were careful to jump off well before this point. I would not advise any sensible person to follow suit.

Incidentally, most of the surfers we saw in this particular area of Noosa were of the grey variety – with an average age of 40+ - which is perhaps indicative of the slightly more expensive accommodation to be found here.

The walk back to the National Park office, where we had parked, took us up to the brow of the headland and back through more dense forest, where we did not see any koalas. It is an enjoyable walk, and the shade was nice after walking in direct sunlight.

We then had lunch overlooking the ocean and headed back towards town and the main swimming beach (between the flags) to read some books and lie about in the sun.

After another night in Noosa, the next day we would head to Fraser Island.