Noooosaaa
I had been to Noosa once before, in the days when the milk bar on the main drag was the social centre of a rather isolated coastal village. We did get waves. 3ft Tea-Tree with two of us out, which was certainly fun, but not really in the same league as the waves we had already surfed at various points on our leisurely trip north from Sydney. Yet somehow, in later years, it was always just too far. You got to the Gold Coast, found waves, not to mention other attractions, and stayed. For a start Brisbane was in the way and, as further discouragement, if there were waves at Noosa, then there were almost certainly waves of equal quality to be had on the Goldie.
The loyalists no doubt will dispute this with starry-eyed reminiscences of the wonders of the place, recalling record breaking rides from the Boiling Pot to some distant dune on Main Beach. They may be right. It hardly matters. Good, better best? Who gives a rats? If there was a good swell it was the wrong scale. Sick, sicker, sickest? Epic, epicer, epicest? You see my (ha ha) point. Perfection defies attempts at quantitative analysis. It is transcendent, so whatever happened elsewhere is irrelevant.
Satori? Enlightenment? Jesus and the Buddha, hand in hand, warmly embracing the eternal essence of your existence? Describe it how you will, you know what I am talking about. No it wasn't good, it was friggin' perfect. Get that perfect. Beyond which there is none.
No doubt Noosa had its moments and those who relocated at just the right time, somewhere around the debut of the second or third milk bar but before the first holiday units, probably had a fine old time.
Uncrowded waves, rapidly inflating real estate, tourists to impress or exploit; a little Aussie paradise. But the growth was exponential; 1 milk bar, 2 milk bars, 4 milk bars, and then, just like Monopoly, a hotel on Main Beach, then 2 hotels, 4 hotels, a major resort, a land release, a new bridge and just like that; instant suburbia.
And the money kept flowing north from Brisbane into that jewel in their coastal crown. Maroochydore might do for the plebs and was a fine spot for an investment unit or five, but Noosa? That was something else. So gradually it became Noooosaaa, mutating into a playground for the wealthy. An upmarket, more mature Byron, populated by Tony and Mal's mates, you know the super-superannuants. The ones making more sunning themselves next to the pool, than they were when actually working. What with all those investment properties producing virtually tax free income faster than it can be spent. Even with European river cruises, regularly remodelled kitchens and all the over-priced, utterly forgettable, art on the walls, the disposable income somehow never quite gets disposed of until, well really, the only sensible thing is to buy another investment property.
But now mature is melding into geriatric. Surfing is but a memory for most of the trail blazers and for them, at least, there is much comfort in memory. For the rest, all the carefully planned exertions and all the expensive clothes, cannot hide the fact; old age is no longer a future concern, it is here and now. The chakras no longer align as they once did. The daily lap around the National Park is no longer as daily as it should be. Various, near miraculous, surgeries hold together, temporarily at least, unstable joints. And then there is the Queensland sun, so harsh on all that pale, aging Northern European skin, which is by far the dominant variety on Hastings Street.
As surfers we have managed to create the myth that we were responsible for turning these villages, Byron, Noosa and the rest, into the bloated replicas of suburbia that they have become. Of course, it is untrue. The locations determined their own future, sitting as they do behind tall extended headlands to block the cold winter winds while wide open to the cooling summer breezes. They were always first choice for shrewd investors.
So we, thankfully, carry little responsibility for what they have become. We counted up our waves and rejoiced in the unspoilt beauty. It was others who calculated the value in dollars. It was others who built the concrete castles on the sand dunes and traded what they can never own. Others who forgot that in this land, home to Earth's most ancient and profound culture, we are only custodians. The land owns the people, never, for all those finely wrought pieces of paper, the people the land. //BLINDBOY
Image courtesy Centre for the Government of Queensland
Comments
No offence blindboy, but what was the point of this article. I felt like I just read 7 paragraphs of dribble where you were just chucking random thoughts out of no where it had no fluency. Just a bit of constructive criticism and it's only my opinion but the photo was nice
Have a good day I am now going to go watch the dawn patrol for the quick pro France hopfully the waves are better than what I just read
Cheers :)
Bit of prophetic wonderment in there.
I used to love Noosa when I was young. Used to camp at the caravan park at the end of Hastings street. Surf the points or if small or the wind was out of the north hit up Sunrise or Sunshine, $1 Bettys Burgers and in winter the bloke in the Milk Bar used to give us free soup in a cup just before he closed. I also got my first real barrel at A-Bay. Wanted to show my wife recently on trip back home, did a blocky of Hastings (which took the better part of half an hour- midweek, no school holidays) and got out of there asap.
Of course Brisbane money was part of developing Noosa, but a lot of that cash stayed in the Caloundra to Maroochydoore stretch. A lot of the big money in Noosa came from Melbourne and in particular the old Melbourne Jewish families.
I actually think Noosa and Byron have been managed pretty good, when you consider how popular they are and the population around these areas now, they still retain a certain type of magic and there is still large areas of bushland.
Im guessing that postcard is from the late 70,s early 80,s???
If you took a pic now the only difference would be the grassed areas would have houses, damn big houses and the development of Hastings street but the majority of the bushland would still look the same or very similar.
the thing that really hit me was how little it seems to have changed. i just took a google street view tour around sunshine beach area. it pretty much looks the same as last time i was up there in the early 80s. now, a google st view tour may not the best way to judge. and i didn't dare have a look at hastings st.
i was recently up in cairns. i was really surprised by how little it has changed in 25 years.
Are you taking the piss chook? You can't be serious. about Noosa and Cairns.
after finishing our leaving certificates in 1965 we jumped into a car with the usual Kelso collapsing racks on top and went to Noosa and then on the way back I hitched another ride at Casino to go back again. Gee that was more than 50 years ago - time just goes too fast. We blink and our time is done. Dust in the wind. Time of my life. Milkbars, pinball and jukeboxes with middle sixties music - my how the world has changed . Horse and carts still delivered bread and milk - now driverless cars are rolling out. I used to really enjoy talking to people who were young in 1915 and now i hear "what would you know?" from those that know it all to those that might know something useful. But sometimes i used to think the same about my parents at one time.
btw @VS1 reminiscing can be interesting. but that's only me and what would I know?
I have never thought Noosa was anything other than a dream for blokes living in Sydney. As Blinder says, points south always had epic waves, why drive the extra 260km?
Being a bloke from a working class background, Noosa was always anathema to me. I strongly dislike those trumped up muppets in Melb and Syd - yes Wharfie I am looking at you!
My surfing life started at Torquay, boobs, bird and winki back when Geelong was a biker town.
Besides that, when woolie is on, regardless of the weather, it shits all over those pussy waves in Noosa.
For us driving up from Melb in those days, the best right was always one just over the border at a certain rivermouth. The added benefit was there is a lefthand rivermouth just up the road.
The next best was hundreds of kilometres away. Who could be arsed? We used to head off on Friday arvie, surf our rings off Saturday/Sunday, smash the local bushpigs and head back Sunday night.
Dem were the days.
Why did you head home on the Sunday Discostu? Weekend Warrior from Melbourne. Perhaps theres a little self resentment mate.
I grew up there now live elsewhere, the points were always crowded (late 80's early 90's on) but the beachbreaks were and still are pretty uncrowded. I'd say Sunshine Beach has changed more than Noosa proper over the years, ditto Sunrise etc as the gentrification looked for somewhere to go. Honestly I think it has turned out as well as you could expect, if not better given what happened to the goldy etc etc. The only thing that well & truly sucks about surfing the points now is it is an absolute mal-abomination, but honestly I still love going up there and think it's a fantastic place - could do with more camping grounds though, there is one now.
Old Noosa, caravan park at the end of Hastings st, scoop netting blue swimmer crabs under the lights of the new bridge between Noosa Village and Tewantin, surfing first point and making dates with the girls sun baking on flat rock, then in the evening all sneaking in through the hole in the fence at the old Drive in Cinema to watch the latest movie. Grandad taking all us kids up the beach to his old bus him and his twin brother towed up there decades before and stashed behind the dunes, to fish, swim and surf. Old Noosa.
Only been visiting Noosa regularly since 99 but I still love it. Maybe I'd feel different if I'd grown up there or close by. I love the surrounding areas too. I think the key as time goes by is to go to these places with the right attitude & expectations & you'll rarely be disappointed :)
Noosa, before it was surfed (maybe by Ma and Pa?) my grandfather and his mates had an abandoned Land Rover on the north bank of the river, and would take gear, fuel, battery over and go fish DI. I can remember the dirt road up from Brissy as a tiny kid and yarning the afternoon away with 90-something relatives on the back porch overlooking a cane farm... The whole landscape seemed ancient and wonderous... truly paradise on earth.
BB I liked the "we are only custodians" part and can add a couple of quotes by my favourite Australian author, we are "tenants of shanties rented from the wind," and that we "have to reach the bare bones of the country, we have to find the bare bones of ourselves."
Nice contribution VJ.
Noosa is still nice. There is quite a strict visitor cap from the lack of parking.
If there is swell, forget about surfing it. People will go to great lengths to surf a soft, forgiving, well-shaped, right hand point wave.
Reminds of what Sorrento has become. A town that now caters for the summer swarms of wealthy Melburnians to splash there cash at for 8 weeks of the year and then leave us stuck with their Sportsgirls, Witcherys, Mimcos etc etc. Now were full of yuppie shops and with no more space in our once cherished mundane main street the only way is up, up with apartment block eyesores. I dont know what saddens me more, what it once was or what it has become...
You're joken' aren't ya??? Portsea/Sorrento have been what you just described since the mid to late 80's.
Loved the article BB. Great to see your sharing your gifts. Some may have missed the emphasis of the article but as you said so beautifully make up your own mind about it. Perception is individual.
I remember Harvest health foods and their lentil burgers in the early seventies. staying in the big timber beach house guest lodge for $3 a night and being served breakfast in my room by a beautiful buxom topless blonde for $1.50. Its a bit dearer there now to stay on main beach. I also liked surfing all day in pumping uncrowded long walls and then after being burnt and exhausted heading up to the Reef hotel and watch the sun go down over the Cooloola north shore with a very cold schooner. Years later in the eighties, I lived there for a while and had "Grunter" my trusty G60 Nissan patrol hidden on a farm on Noosa's North shore which I used to take friends and family up to Double Island for quiet sessions. It got really rusty after a few years and one day heading along the dirt back to the farm, a critter ran on the road and I slammed on the brakes and all the brake lines fell off on the road. Very rusty under there but we didn't need brakes on the beach so she lasted another few years Ha! Great memories and had the best surf of my life there with 4 friends in the eighties after I convinced them (under protest) to drive past all the other pumping waves from Caloudra with me to Noosa park where we were rewarded with the best and longest 6 footers that Australia provides...Yep liked Noosa but its stuffed now because when all the money moves in the soul goes out and unfortunately many surfers have a habit of talking their place up until its crowded as hell and then they wonder what happened to it. So if you live somewhere nice or know a nice place, keep your mouth shut and don't post it everywhere and maybe your gran kids will enjoy it with you too. Here's hoping anyway.
Ahh, but it's the serenity. You don't get that on the GCoast. Few good surf spots are like the past. But this place, still has the vibe.
Feel the serenity ..
thanks BB, just spent two days watching the whales round Cape Byron, couldn't do that in the old days.
Thanks for the comments, great to hear some of the memories. Can't say I was much impressed by the serenity. The track around the points had literally hundreds of walkers. Parking was unattainable anywhere in a 10km radius after 9am, Noosa River was crazy with jet skis, yachts, SUPs and tinnies, all ignoring the speed limit. If you want serenity I would be trying the lakes north of there.
BB, try the off season, out of holidays, with a clean e-se swell swinging around the points, a just a few blokes out. The gold is still there.
Sorry TB, but you could put those days in your basket along with your blue moons, hens teeth, space kittens and unicorn tears. Those days are gone mate, at any time of the year.
Zen, just last autumn had four blokes out at granite, ten at tea tree, two at nationals - off shore, ground swell, mid morning and late arvo. Got it on film.
Not suggesting classic noosa and sunshine was breaking also but with a long period swell, it's still a gem.
This was followed by a trip down south with more gold at Angus, Lennox, breaks all the way down to Uggs reef.
I'm gonna agree with TB there. Last year I had 2 mornings in a row with clean 3-4' Tee Tree to myself for about half and hour. Probably 4 or 5 waves before anyone else turned up.
I will admit I was jumping off the rock at 0430am grey light. :)
So I'm guessing Fitz by 0500 there were an additional 20 or so?
I'm sure there's the odd window of opportunity here and there but I reckon they'd be pretty few and far between.
First one paddled out at 0500 with about 20 by 0515 when I paddled in!! I'd had my fun!
Got some strange looks as I was walking back to the carpark past those running up the path!
Agreed, very few and far between, luck and dedication to dragging your sorry ass outta bed at ungodly hours! Was worth it though.
Have also had good overhead solo sessions on North Shore side of the river mouth whilst all the points (except Granites) are only chest high or less and packed to the hilt during holiday periods. Again, luck of the draw (and a mate who's grown up local)!
Paradise Lost!!!
honestly I think the whole east coast you can find uncrowded waves outside of sydney at beach breaks. Any point/reef situation that is well known & not ultra heavy will be crowded, really depends what you are chasing. After living in Sydney for a long time the prospect of surfing uncrowded waves anywhere no matter the quality is amazingly appealing! Sad but true!
I remember the summer of 69 at Noosa, a playful 4 foot W swell rolled in for a couple of days groomed by a 10 knot W wind and the sand was unbelievable, you could get a wave all the way from first point to Nationals before you had to kick out ..... it was beautiful
I've heard about those west swells at Noosa. Though apparently they've never quite attained the same quality as was experienced in the sixties.
Although the W'ly swell direction does explain how you could ride "all the way from first point to Nationals".
You don't even want to know how gnarly the end section at A-Bay was.......
I think there were probably some hallucinogens that also contributed to the quality of the waves observed back then. See formula below:
Hallucinogens X years passed since event = stories of perfection
Survived on 1$ Betty's burgers when I lived at the Shine.
Surfed the river mouth at Noosa with only a couple out mid morning for 6 days straight in April, 2-4ft clean and really fun. Sharks probably like it too. Our little kids 3 and almost 5 think Noosa is heaven, and we aren't from Sydney or Melbourne.
Noosa is Kool. Flat as a pancake. But I borrowed a canoe off Merrick Davis and paddled round the hinterland, scoping the squintillion dollar mansions, stoned off my fucking moobs. AND then went to Steve Irwin's fucking zoo down the road and watched him fuck about with a reptile. Rock out with your crocs out, hipsters! Happy daze.
Cyclone Althea in 1971 crossed the coast heading out to sea north of Noosa. I was staying at the shop on the edge of National Park (the Marion family?) listening to the wind howl and the rain teem down. Woke in the morning to absolute classic National Park surf. And the road to the park closed by a landslide. There were only a handful of us surfing the best that National can offer. By lunchtime the road was cleared, the crowd arrived, the surf was fading, but the memories are still there well over forty years later.
Most overrated wave in history. Surfed if for a week straight in the early 90's when Fiji got wiped out by a cyclone. Well over 120 people in the water because of gale force SE winds brought the Gold Coast to Noosa. The wave was a relatively flat long wall made Bells look hollow. Plenty of waves in Victoria which kill it. If you want sun and warm water and heaps better waves go to indo. From what I hear the mals have killed it (back then no one would be seen dead on a mal).
Surfed it for a week straight in 1962, mals was all we had and we fucken killed it.
My Grandads brother bought the old Mobil Service station back in the 50's on Gympie Terrace, old Mum reckons it was around Albert st, he got the house attached to it as a part of the sale, and pop's bought the house around the corner. They had a jetty across the road for their boats and a bus up the beach. Living the the life in anyone's terms. In a way they were apart of making Noooossaaa what it is today, but I can tell ya, he did miss the old day's, and not the time of slowly getting crowded out by the incoming wealth and development. There still there, up on the hill in Tewantin, looking down and thinking about all the fuck knuckles tearing up the joint! while they sit back, playing piano accordian and smashing back a few Bundy's & coke for old times sake.
Old Noosa.
They should put a small deep narrow opening for the river back at the end of Hastings street where the river used to run out before they moved it north. The sand could pump back out on the points again then more easily and they would get those amazing banks back on the beach and points. They moved the mouth north to protect Noosa sound when they built it and the river now has a hook in it which stops it flushing out as good. A smaller 2nd opening at the end of Hastings street again done properly shouldn't allow swell in during cyclones to batter the sound. It could even be a canal with a swell gate on it.. they would have tons of sand forever.
The sand at nationals has changed massively since the 90's. Boiling pot used to be a very defined takeoff spot and you could paddle as deep as you wanted although Tim Mitchell, Shannon Neil were always a bit deeper, to actually get plenty of waves. From flatrock down though was just a nightmare crowds wise, just luck of the draw. Now there is so much sand between tea tree and nationals (enos!) that the boiling pot takeoff is no where near as defined as you can pretty much keep paddling across towards tea tree, meaning that the days of sitting out and picking gems are gone.
Also early 90's there was a crazy year with huge rainfall that produced the most epic rivermouth waves I have seen to this day (bar a spot a little nth of sydney). I remember weeks/months of 4-8 foot perfect waves, the left was really bowly and the right more a runner. Didn't even think about sharks - i'd probably quiver in my car now
are the pretties still nude at sunshine?
A-Bay.
Gary G. told me about it:)
Trust Zen to know......
always was a bonus with a good surf at Noooosaa
Hey Turkey slapped! Are you a try hard bikie or what? Get on your Mal dudes! Have some fun in the sun!
The Hotdogatorium on Hastings St and Bingo in the old surf club at night. Great place to learn to surf as a kid.
thanks BB, nice trip, the imagery, ironies and custodial rites, all work.
first visit to Noosa, late 70s, weekday morning, blazing hot, hazy, car wreck smouldering in the sand at the end of Hastings Street, unfriendly clubbie wearing reflector shades, flat as a tack. last visit to Noosa, August '15, weekday arvo, NP to myself following weeks of tiger sharks and bait balls, got a park at the steps, 2' rubble, lux water temp, two waves to myself, they just swarmed out of the trees like locusts and it was on for young and old, like a Biarritz beachie, just take what you can. what's with all the SUPs, okanui wearing zombies, silent and menacing, surreal, and did someone say nothing much has changed there in recent decades, like the traffic, and the gaggles of ancient barbies wearing glitzy gold high heals, to lunch?
Its not 100% true that there would be better quality waves on the Gold Coast. I lived on the Gold Coast from the late 1970'S til 1999. The above statement would only be true if the Gold Coast was handling the swell. Generally back in the day the Goldy would only handle a super clean swell up to 8 feet. The Gold Coast had better waves than Noosa within this swell range. Once the swell was over 6 to 8 feet Noosa would turn it on and the Gold Coast was a giant mess. My friends and I booted it up to Noosa many times mid week in the eighties to get clean cranking reletvely uncrowded surf from Granite's thru to Nationals and the boiling pot. We never surfed first point as why would you when nationals was three times the size!! Its no myth that Noosa cranks but the crowds have killed it just like the Gold Coast. We are moving back up north next year but to quieter north NSW. Then there are the sharks...........
(dig your writing BB, always sparks me up) . Mansions being built on first point, where, the year before was just a dirt track, wasn't a bunch of Brisso's heading north. Joh Bjelke-Petersen back in the seventies changed the laws, to enable open slather to developers, from NooooSaa, all the way down to the Tweed Border and the Islands offshore, to go ahead and conquer. The White Shoe Brigade took advantage of their new opportunity & flooded in with there $$$$ and back slapped each other on their collective backs, for their government backed win fall. The major law that he brought in to facilitate his agenda, was, ' If an owner of land had not developed the land in a certain number of years, the QLD government, by law can seize it and take ownership' and that's what they did. Having said that, there are a lot of people in that area that fight to keep it as close to the way it was, and without them maybe it would be just like the Goldy, but with inconsistent, 2'-4' waves.
Old Noosa