Entries about cooloola sand patch

The most impressive natural scenery is that which involves a journey. Not a leisurely drive in the family car, but a journey that requires effort exertion and time.
After an hour's paddle from Harry's Hut camping ground, where we'd spent the night, we then had a 2 hour hike, all up hill

The Sandpatch in the Cooloola section of the Great Sandy National Park is the one most impressive natural spectacles to be found in Australia, and it is the journey to it that makes it so. It is possible to walk in to the Sandpatch from Elanda Point, on the north western shores of Lake Cootharaba, but the canoeist gets to experience the full grandeur of the ingress route up the Noosa River.

We passed this cormorant warming up in the morning sun

The river is coloured deep red in the shallows, and is utterly black at depths over a metre. The first couple of kilometres up the river after the lake section is quite narrow and winding, with many dead logs and trees in the water. This can make paddling up by starlight at night a cautious affair, as we discovered on the way back down.
Campsite 3 is the start of the six kilometre walk up to the Sandpatch.
The walk is easy, climbs about 1,000ft in altitude, and in humid summer conditions, can be a sauna.

The walking track is easy to find and follow. a pleasant walk on mostly firm sand.

However, as always there were some interesting sights along the way, such as this skink

a busy bee

a tree burnt out by aboriginals

a nobbly tree

this scribble tree

this rusting tree


and this bleeding tree, called a pink blood wood which produced red sap

The first glimpse was exciting

It was good to finally arrive at the sand patch we'd been looking at from the day before, especially for Ann who'd carried all the gear



The lake visible to the south west from the Sandpatch is Freshwater Lake, with Lake Cootharaba further south.

There are many variations in the colours of the sand, in the sandblow .

It is possible to walk down to Teeawah Beach at the eastern end of the sandblow.

We found a shady spot to sit and enjoy lunch

before all havign a snooze in the afternoon sun

When we woke, we took a walk around the strange moonscape - made even more surreal with a fuzzzy head from sleeping

The wind has created some unqiue patterns in the sand with this stray tree branch

and blowing away sand to reveal wood underneath

The wind had created some beautiful patterns in the sand

The sand in places looked as though it was made up of small stones,

but these were infact pieces of coloured sand that crumbled when you touched them.
The colours int he sand were amazing

again,l disguised as rock, but crumbled upon touch

These thin pieces of sand showed the colour variation clearly

A little further on Matt picked up and dropped a piece of drift wood, which echoed around giving the impression the sand we were standing on covered a huge cavern (see video above).
So, to find out just how thin the surface we standing on was, he decided to dig!

Thankfully, we didn't get through! I can't find any explanation for this hollow sound, other than one theory suggesting there is an alien spaceship underneath!!

The plan for our trip up to the sand patch was to watch the sunse.t and with such magnificent views, it didn't dissapoint.

However, the drawback, was that we still had 1.5hrs to walk down, and an hour's paddle back - in the dark!
We did meet this fella goign about his business

and then set off to find camp


so, about those tree branches...??


a great little adventure