June 16th, 2019
We woke up and shuffled our stuff from the front to the back seats where we had our beds for the night and continued driving North. Not far into our drive, we stopped in the town of Noosa for some beaches and another hike for some exercise in between the driving. Noosa was super cute and a place I would recommend staying that might be overlooked on the East Coast. It was a very cute little surf town with an incredible National park that is actually established as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. There was free parking and no park entrance fees, so we did another awesome costal hike.
When we weren’t awing over the pristine beaches with turquoise waters, we were looking up into the giant Eucalyptus trees trying to spot napping Koalas. Like the sloths in Costa Rica, the Koalas have eluded us thus far. We did however get to see a few more whales off the shore which was really cool. I liked the park, beaches, and town so much I almost decided to stay another night there. However, ‘Rainbow Beach’ was not that much further so we decided to keep going and spend the rest of the afternoon at Rainbow Beach. I had read that the minerals are what make it ‘rainbow’ and after being at Rainbow Mountain in Peru I was totally excited for this beach. We drove another hour and half and reached Rainbow beach. Unfortunately, it was not very rainbow-like. There were some high dunes above the beach with mild tones of reds, tans and whites, but it was nothing compared to Rainbow mountain in Peru also formed from mineral deposits. Rainbow beach was huge though and a place where people could drive out on the sand. Beaches with cars on them are not my personal favorite (unless you are the one in the car). Since we were there, we took a walk and caught some rays. Brendan swam in the ocean while I laid on the beach. The best part of this beach is we took a little trail up some stairs and then came out on the top of the high sand dunes where we ran down the sand to the bottom to meet the beach. That was really fun.
After a few hours of beach time we hit the road again and drove to another free campsite out in the middle of nowhere. It supposedly was one of those that was next to a tavern and if you go in and buy a beer you can camp for free. When we got there, the pub was closed so we just began setting up camp. This time we decided to set up the tent instead of sleeping in the car and I took a sleep aid in hopes of a better night’s sleep. It worked and I had a much more restful night in comparison to other car camping nights.