Route: Cooloola Great Walk

Submitted by Nathan Brock on Sat, 08/14/2021 - 07:31pm
Location
Queensland, AU
Distance
88.7 km
Vertical Gain
1,915 m
Description

The Cooloola Great Walk has two options:

Inland track

Coastal track

https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/great-walks-cooloola/walking

Inland Track:

The walk links the Noosa North Shore to Rainbow Beach via the eastern high dunes known as the Cooloola sandmass—one of the largest accumulations of wind-blown sand found along the Queensland coast. Built up during the last 500,000 years, it conserves unique dune, lake and vegetation systems. To the west lies the upper Noosa River—one of the unspoiled river systems in Queensland. This 61,750 hectare section of the Great Sandy National Park is one of the best conserved landscapes of its kind in eastern Australia.

Depending on where you start, the southern entrance starts along the Noosa North Shore on Maximillian Road and the Northern entrance in Rainbow Beach just before the Carlo Sandblow at the end of Cooloola Drive.

The inland track will take you through rainforest, tall eucalypt forest, dry coastal woodland and heath plains. You’ll walk over vast sandblows, past perched lakes, along sandy beaches and see views of the long sweeping landscapes of the Cooloola coastline and the Noosa River lakes. One of the highlights is trekking over Cooloola Sand patch  which give spectacular views of the Sunshine Coast to the west and ocean views to the east.

In addition to this, the track will take you through 4 walkers camps, Kauri, Litoria, Dutgee, Brahminy, which you can access water from tanks which have to be treated prior to drinking. The course is well maintained and can be semi-remote  in some sections between Dutgee and Brahminy. 

Note: This route was commenced at the northern entrance with a slight variation coming out on beach road, following until Maximillian  Road, finishing at the Southern Entrance.

 

GPS Track
Images