Cooloola Great Walk Sunshine Coast

Enjoy long landscape views from the Cooloola Great Walk, Cooloola Recreation Area. Photo credit: Robert Ashdown, Queensland Government

About the Cooloola Great Walk

    Walk highlights

    The Cooloola Great Walk showcases the very best of the Cooloola Recreation Area’s outstanding natural attractions.

    From giant sand hills to hidden rainforests, you’ll be surrounded by nature’s chorus both day and night, captivated by a mass of spring wildflowers and stunned by mirror-image surface reflections on the dark waters of the upper Noosa River.

    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.

    The extensive walking track system winds for up to 102km 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.

    Four walkers’ camps offer tranquil camping experiences, some with stunning views and vantage points from which to take in magnificent sunsets. Designed to hold you captivated for five days, the Cooloola Great Walk is a chance to get away from it all and swap the working week for a walking week.

    Tourism information links

    For tourism information for all regions in Queensland see Queensland Holidays.