Holiday houses in Noosa North Shore

Noosa North Shore is the land of unspoilt, unpopulated beaches and sand highways, wide and wonderful expanses of rainforest, powdery dunes and pristine lakes, and long views of sparkling blue ocean. It’s hard to believe that the nature-driven Noosa North Shore is just a short hop across the Noosa River from its glam bigger sister, Noosa Heads, where people frequent waterside bars and restaurants between shopping outings along busy Hastings Street.

Explore Noosa Heads — the food and retail outlets are well worth lingering in — but then jump on a car ferry to channel your wild side on the North Shore, a pocket of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast offering untrammelled access to some of Australia’s most magical nature preserves — Great Sandy National Park and World Heritage-listed Fraser Island among them. Drive west, and still more natural drama awaits you in the hinterland, where rainforest clings to cliffs webbed with hiking trails.

This pocket of tropical Queensland is pleasant year round on the weather front — temperatures don’t drop that much, even in winter. But it’s particularly popular over summer and the Easter school holidays. Summer can be humid along the coast, however, with many hikers preferring to return to explore trails during alternate seasons. May through November, it’s common to see migrating humpback and southern right whales from the shore. Cooler months are also ideal for events like Noosa Eat & Drink (June) and the Noosa Festival of Surfing (May).

Lakes Cooroibah and Cootharaba

Not far into your North Shore adventure, the Noosa River widens to reveal Lake Cooroibah, then Cootharaba. Both are idyllic places to paddle about in canoes and kayaks, with Cootharaba also hosting windsurfing and yachting competitions during the year. This is the gateway to the Noosa Everglades, one of only two everglades systems on the planet and home to a staggering amount of wildlife.

Great Beach Drive

A 4WD and applicable Queensland government permits are essential for this epic road trip, taking you along the beach from Noosa North Shore to Fraser Island. Pause en route to catch bream or flathead for lunch, pull out your binoculars to spot migratory birds, then continue north to the world’s largest sand island (Fraser), with its turquoise freshwater lakes and vast sand dunes.

Cooloola Great Walk

There are a lot of greats in this part of Queensland, not least this network of 102 kilometres (63 miles) of coastal bushwalking alongside the Great Beach Drive through Cooloola Recreation Area. It sounds immense, but you can tackle as little or as much as you like at any given time, exploring the Cooloola sandmass — one of the largest accumulations of wind-blown sand in the state — as well as rainforest, eucalypt forest, dry coastal woodland, and heath plains.