Queensland's Coastal Jewel — Hastings Street dining, Noosa National Park surf breaks, and one of Australia's finest food scenes
Noosa is the most upscale beach destination on Australia's Sunshine Coast — a small town built around Hastings Street, an open-air strip of restaurants, boutiques, and galleries that manages to feel genuinely world-class without losing its beachside ease. Noosa National Park begins at the end of the main beach and protects 4 km of coastal walking trails past secluded surf breaks and wild koala sightings. The Noosa Food and Wine Festival each May draws the best Australian chefs to a town that already runs on local seafood, Noosa River prawns, and hinterland produce. Eumundi Markets — 25 km inl…
The Kabi Kabi (also Gubbi Gubbi) people have called the Noosa region home for over 30,000 years. European timber-getters arrived in the 1870s, followed by fishing families who built the first permanent settlement around the Noosa River. For most of the 20th century, Noosa was a quiet fishing village; the transformation to a destination began in the 1960s when Australian surfers discovered the consistent right-hand points of the headland. By the 1980s the town was under development pressure, and a sustained community campaign led to strict height and density limits that still define the town t…