Very upmarket and chic holiday resort town which is more like a fashionable Sydney or Melbourne suburb.
The key to any understanding of Noosa Heads is to recognise that it is the Toorak or Double Bay of the Queensland coast. It is a little piece of exclusive city suburbia located on the Sunshine Coast and, as one cynic observed, 'a true holiday home for yuppies': a sort of summer equivalent of Perisher Valley where the young and the wealthy come to get away from it all. Of course it wasn't always like this. Noosa Heads, located 178 km north of Brisbane, and with a present population of around 10 000, was originally a sleepy little village beside the sea, known only to a few anglers and beachcombers.

Noosa's resort area commences at Peregian Beach in the south and extends north through Marcus Beach, Sunrise Beach and Sunshine Beach to Noosa Heads. All are flanked, to the east, by the Coral Sea. North of Noosa Heads, the coastline veers to the northwest, enclosing Laguna Bay, which forms the mouth of the Noosa River. The resort area continues west of Noosa Heads, along the southern bank of the river, through Noosaville and on to Tewantin.

The first European to 'get away from it all' at Noosa was the convict 'Wandi' (David Bracefell) who managed to escape from Moreton Bay with almost monotonous regularity. Each time he escaped he fled north and lived with the Noosa Aborigines, who were presumably the Gubbi Gubbi people. Between 1828 and1839 he escaped four times. He accompanied Henry Russell Petrie's exploration of the coast in 1842 and was involved in the rescue of Eliza Fraser on Fraser Island.

There seems to have been no great urgency to develop Noosa or Tewantin in the nineteenth century. Around 1865 timber-cutters moved into the area and, in their wake, a sawmill was built at Tewantin. The possibility of using the area as a port resulted in the Noosa estuary being surveyed in 1869 and the following year Tewantin was opened as a port shipping timber out and bringing gold prospectors in to the Gympie goldfields.

It wasn't until after World War I that the area began to develop as a tourist resort, once attracting no more than about 600 visitors a year. A surf lifesaving club was formed in 1927, the Noosa National Park was established in 1930 and tourist development started in earnest in the late 1940s.

The road which winds along the banks of the Noosa River from Tewantin provides a number of picnic spots beside the river. While Tewantin is the older settlement, today the two tourist destinations merge into each other and it is only the newness and the costliness of Noosa which really divides them.

In recent times the area has been the subject of considerable controversy. In 1970 conservationists fought the plans of two sandmining companies who wished to mine Cooloola National Park. A longer term problem has been the feeling amongst locals that the village atmosphere was being destroyed by unsympathetic high-rise and canal development.

Hastings Street, Noosa's main street, is starting to look like an upmarket version of any shopping centre along the Gold Coast. Local businessmen, with good old-fashioned Queensland parochialism, insist that they have tried to retain a village atmosphere and blame most of the tourist excesses on developers from the southern states. In spite of these complaints there are many aspects of Noosa and Tewantin which are charming. There is a sense of style which is missing from much of the Queensland coast.

Holidaymakers in search of COMFORT will have no trouble obtaining luxurious accommodation and a good feed. There are plenty of eateries, particularly along Hastings St, catering to a wide range of palettes and budgets, and a growing number of wine bars. The ocean beaches are patrolled, while there are calmer riverside beaches along the Noosa River. Surfing is popular, there are learn-to-surf outfits and all manner of aquatic activities, including jetskis, parasailing, windsurfing, scuba diving, fishing, cruises, canoeing and kayaking along the river, and kite surfing. There are also 4WD tours to Fraser Island and the option of exploring Noosa National Park. Investigations of the area can also take place via camel trek, horseback, Harley Davidson, biplane or mountain bike. There are markets at Noosa Harbour, Peregian, Tewantin and at Eumundi, and plenty of art galleries and antique shops about. The local night clubs offer a more visceral experience. Access is via air (the airport is at Pacific Paradise to the south), coach (the bus depot is at Noosaville), rail (the railway station is at Cooroy, to the west), sea (there is a harbour at Tewantin and a slipway in Mill St, Noosa)