Travelling over the open beach, our driver Bert suddenly braked and the four-wheel drive slid to an end on the hard sand.
Bert had spotted a beach fisherman standing in the shallows, straining under a really bent rod. Bert jumped from the vehicle, camera at hand, since the fisherman hauled in a one metre long shovel-nosed shark.
“Are you able to eat it?” someone asked nervously.
“Obviously you are able to!” Bert shouted back, since the fisherman proudly organized his catch for Bert to capture on film.
Bert’s photograph was for his website, the public face of Noosa 4WD Ecotours the company Bert (Schutte) and his wife Lyn have already been operating for 21 years. From the northern end of the Sunshine Coast, they feature “real Aussie” off-road adventures over the Coloured Sands beaches and, behind the beaches, on the sandy rainforest tracks of the Cooloola National Park.
While Bert’s tours usually cover the same route, Bert said every day was different for him. At the conclusion of our day with Bert, we could see why. After seeing the shark, we passed a dark dingo foraging at the waters edge, and watched a group of paragliders catching thermals above the dunes. Bert said he sometimes saw whales and dolphins offshore, and even manta rays.
We met Bert at the Noosa River ferry at Tewantin, and climbed into his well appointed Toyota Landcruiser to cross to the North Shore. The ferry is the only method vehicles can cross the river, so the North Shore has none of the high density tourist development to the south.
We were told there have been people living on the North Shore, but it was hard to spot them. A lot of the location is banksia-shrouded wetland, and most of the roads are gravel, and hard on standard cars.
We headed for the beach where Bert engaged the Toyota’s four-wheel drive, barged over the soft sand to the hard surface close to the shallows, and turned north. Ahead people was Teewah Beach, 54km long of four-wheel driving heaven, completely from the Noosa River to the township of Rainbow Beach.
While the beach was quite remote, it wasn’t deserted. The beach is a registered road and there have been a lot of other 4WD traffic, as well as lots of campers in the dunes behind the beach. Some campers were fishing, or playing beach cricket. Others were just relaxing. A sign outside one campsite read: “Exercise-free zone. Gentle lifting of stubbies allowed.”
At the Teewah Coloured Sands, it’s not the beach that’s coloured: it’s the dunes. They range in colour from light orange/almost yellow to dark brown – or in most of the colours of the red spectrum, according to Bert.
This collation of reds was evident at Red Canyon, an extensive fissure in the dunes about halfway over the beach. Inside the canyon were spectacular formations of sand, in outcrops, cliffs and recesses. We clambered up a steep, sandy way to the the top of dunes. The view was outstanding. We’re able to see up and down the whole beach and across to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world.
We stopped for morning tea at the remains of the MV Cherry Venture. She ran aground there during a cyclone in 1973, and her wreck has been a landmark on Teewah Beach, although recently she lost her distinctive profile when her rusting superstructure was removed for safety reasons.
Immediately after our Cherry Venture stop, Bert deterred the beach and crossed the sand dunes into Cooloola National Park. The park is noted for having large tracts of sub-tropical rainforest growing in huge sand masses. Even as we followed the sandy track inland, the surrounding vegetation changed from banksia scrub to scribbly gum forest and then to rainforest. This transition in the vegetation was marked by the gradual upsurge in the numbers of grass trees next to the track. The grass tree has a unique stalk, rising from the trunk which has a fringe of grass-like fronds. Bert said he had seen parrots lying under these grass trees, drunk. He explained that, in summer, the stalks are covered in fruit. The birds over-indulge, the fruit ferments in the birds’stomachs; and they end up worse for wear.
The track headed into a valley, where in fact the rainforest was more prolific. Thick stands of piccabeen palms, strung with liana vines, lined the track while strangler figs and quandong trees rose to make a canopy over them. Standing alone one of the tangled forest were huge kauri pines, growing column-like into the sky. Very slow growing, these kauri pines are up to 800 years of age, Bert said.
Site Title 