The Sunshine Coast

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that Garry and I have flown away for another long weekend. Avid readers of this blog will know I was in Christchurch last weekend, and Queenstown the weekend before that. This weekend we’re in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. We flew into Maroochydore Airport on Thursday morning.

This is my first time on the Sunshine Coast. Garry and I decided to fly here to cash in a Qantas travel credit that was about to expire. We’ve also talked about buying a second home further north as a warm winter retreat. I’ve suggested anywhere between Yamba (near Ballina) and Noosa would be ideal. We’d then be close to a regional airport, making it easy to reach, and close to an international airport if we ever relocated permanently, i.e. Brisbane Airport.

Last Summer we spent a couple of weeks exploring Yamba, Ballina and Lennox Head. We’ve also stayed on the Gold Coast several times, including a weekend in Surfers Paradise in 2023, and a business trip to Broadbeach last November. This left just the Sunshine Coast to vet and explore.

We’ve cashed in some Accor loyalty points to secure an oceanfront apartment overlooking the Mooloolaba headlands and nearby Alexandra Beach. Sadly the room can only be described as “functional” at best. However, the weather has been superb with highs of 21C. Garry and I were out in short sleeves while visiting Noosa yesterday. This is exactly how I envisioned a winter retreat destination.

On Thursday we explored the outer suburbs of Maroochydore, Kawana Waters, Birtinya, Bokarina and Mooloolaba. Yesterday, we drove up the coast through central Maroochydore, and on to Twin Waters, Marcoola, Coolum Beach, Sunshine Beach and Noosa Heads. We now have a great feel for the Sunshine Coast, and know exactly what our money will buy. Watch this space.

UPDATE: 10:30pm

We’ve finished off our long weekend with a superb meal at Belle Venezia. This is an award-winning Italian restaurant on the foreshore at Mooloolaba. Garry went for the Morton Bay Bug spaghetti, while I tried the crayfish ravioli. However, the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the locally made Blood Orange sorbet.

Gold Coast on high

Garry and I recently enjoyed a weekend in Surfers Paradise. We had to travel to Brisbane for business before Easter. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we ended up with meetings scheduled on either side of the weekend.  We made the most of a frustrating situation by basing ourselves on the Gold Coast. 

I used my Platinum status with Accor to book us into a serviced apartment at Peppers Soul. The hotel delighted us with an unexpected upgrade. We spent the weekend enjoying a Skyview Apartment Suite. The spectacular Gold Coast vista from every window was a real highlight. If only every business trip unfolded this way!

Daintree Magic

Garry’s brother, David, and his family recently moved into their new home in Far North Queensland.  Garry and I took time out over Easter to check out their new digs and enjoy a few days of R&R.  Our itinerary kicked off with a night in Palm Cove staying at the uber-ritzy M Gallery Reef House. We then crossed the Daintree River for a night in a rainforest cabin near Thornton Beach before making our way to David and Katie’s house for two days.

Our first night in Palm Cove was a last-minute addition. We’d originally booked morning flights from Sydney to Cairns on Good Friday. However, Qantas rescheduled the flight which gave us the option to change our ticket at no cost.  We decided to rebook on the last flight departing Thursday evening (a flight that originally added hundreds of dollars to the ticket). 

We also cashed in a complimentary night’s accommodation in an Accor Hotel that’s offered annually by American Express and secured a room at The Reef Hotel. We also cashed in some reward points with Hertz to booked an SUV for four days for just a few dollars. It’s nice to see these loyalty programs actually deliver on the promise of “free stuff”.

Our flight landed shortly after 11pm and we made it to our hotel shortly after midnight.  Sadly Reef Hotel proved to be a bit of dud.  The bed was rock hard and the breakfast we ordered the following morning was dismal, to say the least.  The hotel itself was stunning.  The grounds included a lush tropical garden, a secluded pool and an expansive outdoor deck for dining that looked out over a palm-fringed beach.

Before checking out of the hotel we took a walk along the Palm Cove beachfront promenade.  The streetscape here is immaculately manicured and maintained.  We finished our stroll with a walk out to the end of the Palm Cove wharf.  Plenty of avid young fishermen were enjoying themselves. We witnessed one them catch and release a baby shark.  Apparently, you’re not allowed to keep them unless they’re more than a metre long.  I’m not too sure I’d be keen to handle a shark that big.

The Daintree proved to be as spectacular as ever.  The ferry crossing was at capacity thanks to the holiday weekend.  It took almost half an hour to get across the river.  However, once across the traffic soon dispersed.  Our first stop was the remote Cape Kimberley beachfront.  Here we spent an hour walking a stretch of the beach before heading inland to enjoy views of the Daintree River mouth from the Mount Alexandra lookout.

Our next stop was Thornton Beach where we took another stroll along its empty stretch of sand as far as the mouth of the picturesque Cooper Creek.  The Daintree’s beaches are always wonderfully devoid of people which really leaves you feeling at one with nature.  We then enjoyed a quick picnic lunch before heading north to Cape Tribulation. 

The Cape was crowded as always and it expansive, wave-fringed beach remains as iconic as ever.  However, the rainforest cabin that Garry had booked proved to be a real highlight.  We were delighted to find we’d been allocated a cabin furthest from the lodge’s main facilities.  This meant we enjoyed plenty of wildlife including bush hens, birds and iridescent butterflies.

The restaurant on site provided a huge surprise.  We dined on some world-class dishes on an outdoor deck overlooking a lush tropical stream.  It left the far more expensive The Reef House for dead in terms of quality! As it was the tail end of the wet season, several brief showers peppered our cabin overnight.  There is something truly magical about lying in bed listening to rain cascading through the rainforest outside your door.

The next morning we made our way South again stopping briefly to visit the Daintree Wild Zoo.  This slightly ramshackle affair offered up a few fauna highlights including a family of baby Sugar Possums, massive crocodiles and a pair of remarkably healthy looking Dingos.

David and Katie’s new home was spectacular.  We enjoyed two nights with the family and made full use of their expansive outdoor entertaining space.  Our first full day was spent visiting the weekend markets in Port Douglas and trying out the new coastal walkway around the town’s iconic headland.  Garry and I also discovered the delights of chocolate-dipped frozen bananas at the markets.

Our final day saw us enjoy a leisurely lunch in town before finally making our way back to Cairns in time to catch our flight home again.  Garry and I both agreed it had been a refreshing, much-needed break after an incredibly frantic period for the business.

Bogans be gone!

My little bro has opened my eyes to a whole new part of Australia.  For as long as I can remember the Gold Coast was known as Australia’s Bogan Capital.  It was always the holiday destination of choice for larger louts long before discount airlines made Bali an affordable alternative.  News headlines constantly proclaimed it one of the nation’s crime hot spots and graduating high school students flocked in their thousands for an annual “Schoolies” week of drunken revelry.

As a result, I’ve never had a burning ambition to visit the Gold Coast.  Until recently my experience of the region had been limited to its popular Theme Parks and a brief afternoon excursion to see the iconic beach at Surfers Paradise.  It was therefore with some trepidation that I signed up for a weekend away with my brothers on Gold Coast.

However, my fears proved to be unfounded.  Little bro Matt gave my brother Hamish and I an entertaining eye opening tour of the Gold Coast.  Over three days we dined in style, shopped for designer labels and enjoyed an afternoon winding through the quirky back roads of Mount Tamborine.  

Matt showed us shade-dappled streets lined with swanky cafes and country lanes teeming with boutique wineries and micro-breweries.  In fact the only remotely Bogan experience we enjoyed was a crazy evening of laughs at Dracula’s adult cabaret; and a less than impressive Thai meal on our final night out.

The genesis of our weekend away was my brother Hamish’s forthcoming 50^th birthday.  Matt suggested we schedule some time out together to celebrate while noting that I’d missed a family gathering in Rarotonga for my own 50^th birthday two years earlier.  The Cook Islands excursion occurred three months after Garry and I had acquired our company.  At the time our initial learning curve was simply overwhelming as we worked towards the company’s busiest trading period of the year.

Our weekend together in late July was a wonderful time away.  We rented a rooftop apartment that came decked out with its own spa pool, BBQ zone and stunning coastal vista.  We made the most of our venue with a Moet fuelled birthday breakfast on the sun-drenched balcony and evening meals of Kangaroo burgers on brioche buns.  I’ll definitely be back to enjoy more of the best that the Gold Coast has to offer.

Dinosaur country

Our Queensland outback adventure continued with a two-day excursion in sleepy Winton. This quiet country town is 177kms northeast of Longreach. It takes less the two hours to traverse the straight, monotonously flat highway between the two towns. I can confidently report that the drive's scenic highlights, in a nutshell, are Emus grazing the area's sparse vegetation.

However, our journey did have one unexpected encounter. Along the way passed a strange convoy of white trucks trailing miles of cabling. At first, we thought we’d encountered a remote NBN work crew. However, we later learnt that we’d seen the Queensland State Government’s deep crust seismic survey team in action. The survey consists of 40 people, travelling in 20 4WD vehicles, supported by five logistics trucks.

The survey is being conducted along 670kms of highway from April to June this year. The crew work 7 days a week, travelling 15kms a day. A team of surveyors lay positioning pegs, which a trailing team of cable-layers spool out temporary cables attached to geophones (microphones that listen for sound waves). Four Vibrosel trucks then traverse the route stopping occasionally to drop a giant vibration pad that sits mid-chassis. Each pad sends vibrations rolling through the ground for a distance of up to 20 kms. It’s an impressive set-up.

On our way into Winton we stopped for the afternoon at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum. This facility sits on the lip of a mesa plateau that rises above the surrounding Outback. It’s home to Australia’s most famous dinosaur discoveries. Less than two decades ago, very little was known about the nation’s Jurassic past. All this changed after a chance discovery of fossils by a local farmer.

Today, we know that the entire Winton area is littered with fossils, sitting less than two metres underground. Visitors are invited to join the scientists and chip away at the bedrock surrounding the museum’s latest discoveries. The museum is also one of the only locations in the world where you can see an original holotype. That’s what they call the actual stone fossils used to identify a new species. Every other museum usually displays a replica cast of the original stone.

We spent the following day exploring all that Winton has to offer. The town has two claims to fame. It was here that the Qantas board first met to establish the airline. It was also here that the iconic bush anthem, Waltzing Matilda, was first performed in 1895. The town now hosts a museum dedicated to the song.

We wondered if a museum devoted to a song could occupy us for long. However, we spent almost two hours unravelling the mystery of its quirky language and its surprising role in modern Australian history. I learnt that a jumbuck is a sheep and that the song's Matilda isn't actually a woman, it's a bedding roll. It also should have come as no surprise to learn that Waltzing Matilda was inadvertently substituted for the Australian national anthem after Shirley Strickland received a gold medal for the 80-metre hurdles at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.

Our final day in the Outback was spent making our way back to Longreach, where we spent the afternoon exploring The Great Machinery Mile in nearby Ilfracombe. This is a roadside collection of industrial and agricultural machinery, some of it is more than a century old. Perhaps the most interesting item on display was a yellow grader, reputably one of only three in the entire country. Who knew!

Saturday morning saw us catch a flight back to Brisbane and on to Sydney. Our verdict? Longreach is worth a visit. We learnt more about the Australian Outback on this one trip than on any other we’ve taken into the interior. As for me, I’m making plans to buy McKinnon & Co (Yes, I am joking). They’ve got the local tourism market cornered with some incredibly well-crafted pioneering experiences. If the price is too high then I know what I’ll be doing in retirement. I'll be sitting in the back office managing this awesome business.

Going bush

When asked to name a quintessential Outback town, names like Broken Hill and Birdsville typically come to mind.  I visited the former more than a decade ago and plan to see the latter someday.  However, from a pure tourism viewpoint, Broken Hill proved to be a one-day wonder.  I suspect Birdsville will prove no better.

The same cannot be said for Longreach, the self-proclaimed capital of the Outback.  This cosy regional centre sits on Queensland’s Landsborough Highway, midway between Mt Isa and Rockhampton.  Midway means 700 km in either direction.  Longreach sits on the rim of the Thompson River’s floodplain.  Its location marked the western terminus of a rail line stretching inland from the Queensland coast.

Garry and I spent the Easter weekend exploring a surprising variety of activities that await visitors.  We arrived late on Sunday afternoon courtesy of the daily Qantaslink flight from Brisbane.  I’d made a last-minute change to our itinerary and booked a cabin at the Kinnon & Co Outback Lodge.  This proved to be a savvy decision.   We enjoyed three nights in an air-conditioned cabin on the edge of a dry grass paddock grazed by the occasional kangaroo.

Our first Outback adventure began that evening with a steak meal at the nearby Stockman’s Hall of Fame.  The dining area sits under an open-sided shed.  This is the Outback after all.  Temperatures rarely fall below 20C at night.  Patrons are kept cool by the whirling 3-metre blades of a giant ceiling fan.

The following morning we made our way to the Qantas Founder’s Museum.  This venue, based on the southern fringe of the local airport, was the first permanent base for Australia’s national airline.  The airline was founded in 1920, just up the road (all of 177 kms away) at Winton.  The original hanger is still there.  It’s now a heritage listed building.  The museum houses many of the airline’s most famous aircraft including its first jetliner, the Boeing 707, and it’s last Classic Series Boeing 747.

Garry and I booked the Wing Walk Tour.  This behind the scenes tour took us through the bowels of a Jumbo Jet, before culminating in a walk out onto one of the plane’s expansive wings.   We discovered the location of its infamous black box, made our way from first class into the avionics bay and on into the forward cargo hold.  We saw where the emergency oxygen is kept and discovered just how enormous its central fuel tank is.

We finished the day with a sunset cruise along the Thompson River.  We had hoped to travel on the historic Thomson Belle paddlewheel steamer.  Unfortunately, the boat was full and we found ourselves riding a rather plain flat-bottom skip.  However, it gave us an opportunity to photograph the old lady as she steamed into the sunset.  Our river cruise finished with a fireside plate of bushman’s stew; some truly tall tales from Scotty, a local bush poet, and the cinematic retelling of an infamous cattle-rustler’s grand heist.

Our second day was spent exploring the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. We spent more than three hours wandering through its exhibits learning about the nation’s Outback pioneers. It's an incredibly well-executed tourist attraction. The Stockman’s main building consists of three soaring corrugated iron arches. According to a plaque outside, it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1988.

On Wednesday we took a trip back in time to the days of the Cobb & Co stagecoach.  Kinnon & Co has faithfully reconstructed stagecoaches that take tourists on a horse-drawn joyride through the local bush.  Garry and I were invited to sit on the top of the coach.  It seemed like a great idea at the time. 

However, by the time we’d galloped along bone-dry dirt tracks, we found ourselves covered in a fine layer of dust.  It was rather sobering to contemplate how dusty we were after 30 minutes.  I admire those early travelers who rode the coach for days on end.  It's not business-class Qantas style.
 

Follow this link to read about our overnight trip to Winton and the Outback's spectacular dinosaur region.