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Rainbow Beach to Freshwater

Rainbow Beach to Freshwater
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08/08/2022

 

Gt Sandy National Park

Australia

 

26°S
153°E

0 - 70m ASL

 

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THE FIRST red light of the dawn appeared over the horizon as I reached the lookout at the northern end of the Rainbow Beach village. I headed down to the beach where I sat on the cold sand watching the sky lighten above a bank of distant clouds. Several walkers and runners appeared on the beach for their early morning walks.

It was not long before I could see up to Inskip Point and Fraser Island to the left and up to Mudlo Rocks to the right where the waves of the outgoing tide were breaking upon, making look impassible from here. Recent conditions had caused the level of the sand along the beach to drop about two metres exposing these rocks making that part of the beach impossible to drive through even at low tide. I saw somebody walk around the rocks to the beach on the other side, so I assumed I would be able to get through when I start after sunrise.

The sky continued to lighten before the bright sun rose through a gap in the distant clouds highlighting the low breaking waves on this calm day. I stood up, put on my pack and began hiking to the right along the sweeping beach towards the distant headlands of Double Island Point clearly visible out in the bay.

I only got about a hundred metres along the beach when I met a guy who had parked his 4WD up the beach for the morning. He was so good as to take my picture before letting me continue, reaching the rocks a few minutes later. They were a lot easier to pass than it had appeared from further back along the beach. There was plenty of compact sand in between the rocks to walk on. The beach ended at a low cliff formed by part of the same Mesozoic formation as the boulders scattered over the sand. These boulders had been covered over with sand when I last hiked through here about four years ago. Above the low cliff was the golden sand of the start of the Cooloola Sandmass with the sand rising about ten metres. A couple of small waterfalls of clear water were tumbling over the solid rock having come out of the sand absorbed from all the rainfall over summer and autumn.

After passing the rocks I was on open beach. With no way to drive through the rocks, I knew the beach will be vehicle free for much of the morning. The sandmass at the end of the beach grew higher exposing a white and yellow cliff, the first of many exposed cliffs of the Coloured Sands I'll be hiking past over the next couple of hours.

The beach widened between the sand cliffs and the nearly calm water of the sand as I hiked along its hard surface around the sweeping bay. The huge storms of recent months has eroded the ancient sand cliffs showing their brilliant colours and interesting sand formations. The sand is supposed to be pure white silica, but over the past seven hundred thousand years since starting to be formed by sand washed down the Blue Mountains behind Sydney and carried up the coast by the current to be deposited here, the forest covering the sandmass has discoloured the sand, the different colours representing different types of vegetation. Some times the sandmass had been covered in dry eucalyptus forest, other times by rainforest, and other times perhaps some areas hosted window lakes and swamps. All these have discoloured the sands of what is now the world's oldest sand formation. The beach eating away into the sandmass along its northern shore here at Rainbow Beach has sliced away a cross section of hundreds of thousands of years of history, greatly predating even Aboriginal history.

About half an hour past Mudlo Rocks, the sand cliff steepened into a golden rocky section with no forest on top. I had reached Carlo Sandblow, a large mass of exposed sand hidden on the other side of the cliff. I could see a couple of distant people at the lookout on top of the cliff as I hiked along its base. It was not long before the sandblow ended and green forest was once more capping the top of these impressive sand cliffs.

I continued following the beach, which narrowed at some points showing the high tide had more than lapped at the bottom of the cliffs. Even where the beach was narrow I was a good seventy metres out from the base of the hundred and fifty metre high sand cliffs. There were a lot of boulders scattered around the sand in places from old rock formations once covered by sand.

Some sections of the sand cliffs had collapsed into large conical landslides, many of these very recent. The entire formation was gradually disappearing into the sea, particularly with the gradual rise in sea levels. The colours of the cliffs changed to a dull beige colour before reaching a section of bright yellow layers.

I stopped to rest at Middle Rocks, a large flat rock formation with a large area of pure ironsand going to the cliff behind it.

From the rocks I continued along the beach. The sand became quite wet with a few small streams flowing out from the base of the sand cliffs. The sandmass doesn't have any streams flowing on it as all the rainwater absorbs straight into the sand but reaches an underground water table where the water gradually seeps out in small streams such as these.

After passing a couple more small landslides and areas of vegetation growing on a stable part of the cliffs, I reached an area with a couple of caves carved into the sand from recent wave action on the high tides. They would have been very unstable so I kept clear of them continuing along the beach. One of these caves had what looked like bright yellow dye oozing out of it and covering the browner sand. This was some sort of pigment in the cliffs carried out by the water.

As I continued along the beach, I reached a few areas where dead wood covered much of the beach, from parts of the forest above having collapsed with the cliffs in recent storms and the waves having carried away the sand leaving the timber. The colour of the cliffs started changing with sections of rust and bright red coloured sand from different types of forest and probably swamp once on this part of the sandmass. The cliff formations were spectacular around here, and appeared very different from the formations I had seen here four years ago.

After passing this dramatic area, the cliffs began to reduce in height, quickly dropping to under a hundred metres, then down to fifty metres. I passed a valley carved into the sandmass almost dropping to the high tide line.

I reached another area with a lot of logs covering the beach as two motorbike (the first two vehicles I had seen on the beach today) passed heading the other way. The fallen forest was easy enough to pass and stopped to meet another person who took my picture (no need to do selfies today it seems).

After the fallen forest the beach quickly widened and the exposed cliffs stopped, just being low forested hills now. I passed a large lagoon as the beach started to turn towards the Double Island Point formations. I passed Leica Track with the road coming out just short of another lagoon forcing vehicles to make a sharp turn in either direction. I followed the lagoon for nearly a kilometre before it petered out over a wide sand flat. The sand here was quite soft, but I continued along it towards Double Island Point hills, now very close. I rounded the first point entering a small bay with several vehicles parked above the high tide line waiting for the now incoming tide to cut them off from the rest of the beach. At the back of the beach was the start of the Double Island Point track, which I followed along the plastic surface, then the wide sand and dirt track through the forest quickly ascending the hill.

The scrubby forest blocked the view most of the time, but I occasionally had a good view out over parts of the point with the bright sea stretching out to the horizon. The track continued climbing moderately eventually passing the light house keeper's house before reaching the Double Island Point lighthouse, where I stopped for a late lunch.

There was almost no wind at all today up on the top. From here I could see out across the sea where a couple of yachts were coming around the point. Near the lighthouse was the weather station, famed for recording Australia's highest wind gust for a non-cyclonic storm (199km/h). The little information centre was closed with nothing inside of it these days.

After lunch, I continued along the track heading down towards the top of Teewah Beach, sweeping along a good fifty kilometres to its end at Noosa Heads, just poking above the horizon. I decended into the scrubby bush winding down the hill before reaching a steep boardwalk dropping down to the beach where several vehicles were parked.

From here I started hiking the ten kilometres towards Freshwater, where I will be stopping tonight. Large waves were breaking on the beach and the tide was already mostly in, making walking along the soft sand a lot harder than the 13 kilometre beach walk I had done this morning from Rainbow Beach to the other side of the point. This was going to be quite a challenge with countless tyre tracks along the sand making it even more difficult to walk along.

The point gradually diminished behind me, with the next hill gradually approaching. I could navigate by these hills, knowing the Leica Track comes out after the next big hill, and guessed Freshwater would be past the next major hill. The going was slow but I persisted.

I was nearly three kilometres along the beach when I met a couple of people who were parked there fishing over the high tide. Having a quick chat to them broke the monotony before I continued along the beach reaching Leica Track after a couple of hundred more metres. The beach here was almost impossible to walk along thanks to the deep tyre tracks going in all sorts of directions from the road entrance.

Once past Leica Track, the sun was starting to go down in the sky. I walked close to the one to three metre high sand cliff where there were no vehicle tracks for the most part. The going was still slow though. Over the next couple of hours the shadows stretched out over the beach and the wind began to pick up, requiring me to put on my jacket again.

Upon passing the second major hill, I spotted an inconspicuous stick sticking up out of the sand. I headed up onto the low sand dune and spotted the track heading inland towards Freshwater Track with a sign showing the great walk. I followed the sandy track following a stairway up over the larger scrubby dune to a seat with a view over the beach. From here the track continued inland gradually ascending. The track was well graded and much easier going than the long beach walk I had just done.

After about 800 metres the track descended off the dune into a low valley, where I reached an ampitheatre. Here the main track continued back up onto the dune whilst a side track lead to the nearby camping ground with a toilet and shower block. I explored the camping ground for a while before setting up the tent and settling in for the night.

The last people I had seen on the beach pulled up into the camping ground and set up their vehicle tent just after dark. Very tired from the long hike I fell asleep very quickly.

 
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