Rainbow Beach, Queensland

Mounting a sign ‘leave only footprints’ in Rainbow beach would get covered in bullet holes, is one way to explain the vibe here. Although never mind the characters, we certainly enjoyed what Rainbow Beach has to offer in beaches and walking trails. 

Gonna

 It’s an amazing place to be out in the water, kayaking along the ocean gives you the best view of the multi coloured sand phenomenon. 

​Rainbow beach is a fairly new town, only being gazetted in 1969. Originally known as Black Beach, it was renamed Rainbow Beach due to its 72 various colours in the beach sand. The town started off facilitating the sand mine, which ceased operations in 1976, since then it has focused on tourism. Its main attractions are beaches, 4WDing, fishing and walking tracks. Another attraction was the shipwreck Cherry Venture which was beached at double island point, sunk in 1973 and removed in 2007, it brought people in to graffiti and eat ice cream at the stand. Even though her rusted remains are removed, a prop is nicely displayed to represent its tourism legacy.

Around the town is nice and quiet, the beach is certainly the main attraction. The burger we had with a wagyu beef pattie well past the used by date gave us a hint that we should be out on the beach fishing for a meal. The beaches are wide, sandy and filled with colour. Wide beaches stretch up to Inskip point to connect to Fraser Island and down to the northern shores of Noosa, creating a highway for four wheel drives to commute sensibly along. Making for a spectacular drive on Double Island Point for a kayak tour, we felt concerned to see the layers of oil and black residue it leaves, especially up towards Inskip point. We drove to Searys Creek, which was a nice gentle 200-metre walk, with gorgeous tea coloured water and greenery made it great for dipping the feet in. 

We decided to jog the bush track to Poona Lake from the Bymein Day Use Area, located off Freshwater Road in the Great Sandy National Park. It's about 2.2kms to the lake, so we jogged there and back twice over, making for a fun, yet heart rate raising jog of about 8.8kms, the track of which climbs steadily towards the lake. Poona lake has a brownish tinge, coloured by the surrounding Tea Tree plants and although a beautiful spot with perfect white sand, the dark water didn't look appealing to venture into. During the jog, Shovel stood on what we think was a tree snake before it slid quickly up a tree and almost ran straight into a huge gonna, before it too hurried up a tree and he was almost knocked out by a falling branch. Just as well I let him jog in front.