Thanks to a wrong turn, my family discovered its own slice of paradise

January 1, 2026 — 5:00am

One sticky afternoon in 1986, my parents took a wrong turn off the Bruce Highway and a family tradition was born. My dad had temporarily moved to Brisbane for work and, on the advice of a colleague, had trundled his wife and baby daughter into the car for a day trip to Fraser Island. Without GPS or internet to guide them, it wasn’t until they were rolling down the steep hill towards Noosa Cove, its cerulean waters twinkling up at them between tropical trees, that they realised they were lost but had also found something special.

Back then, before Hastings Street became a boulevard of luxury apartments, trendy eateries and crowded car parks baking in the sun, Noosa was your quintessential beach town. Kids would run up from the main beach, hair still dripping wet, to buy Sunnyboys or Bubble-o-Bill ice creams from the food court, where there was a newsagency and a handful of family-run pizza and fish and chip shops. The car park next to the surf lifesaving club was sand instead of bitumen. Glaringly, there were a few empty plots of land. The night air was alive with cicadas and the smoky allure of backyard barbecues, because there weren’t many restaurants for people to eat at.

My parents fell in love with the place. They abandoned their plans for Fraser Island, booked a family apartment that night, then spent the next decade perfecting their holiday formula. They added a set of twins (my brother and I) and experimented with trips to the Gold Coast and Whitsundays, but nothing could beat Noosa. After we moved back to Melbourne, we migrated every summer to the warmer waters up north like a flock of pale birds.

Those annual holidays are a salty blur of early mornings spent body surfing in curling waves, languid naps in beach tents, and rubbing coconut oil on already sunburnt limbs, but some memories stand out as clearly as a rashie tan line. A snake slithering over my legs as I dozed on Alexandria Beach. Fishing for bream on the river and pricking my fingers on their spiky dorsal. Sitting in the cool evening sand and counting the stars as they popped into the sky.

Maybe I was just too young to notice, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, Noosa changed as word got out. Flashy shops appeared on Hastings Street. Increasing rents drove art studios out of the area. Apartments rose higher. Getting a parking spot became harder than catching a resident brush turkey. But even as Noosa changed, it remained a familiar source of comfort, like coming home.

I changed too. Puberty brought cringeworthy attempts to adopt a surfie persona. My parents divorced, sold the holiday home and went their separate ways, but Noosa remained. Family trips were replaced with trips with the boys – binge drinking in the sun, skinny dipping in the surf, listless nights on the empty dance floor at Noosa’s one and only nightclub. Later, it was one of the first places I took my fiancee when we started dating. Somehow, sharing Noosa felt vulnerable, as though seeing where I grew up would peel back the layers of time to reveal something intimate.

Noosa’s waters also have a restorative power. In my mid-20s, a close friend died after a long battle with brain cancer. The grief knocked me down like a freight train. In the months that followed, I quit my job and retreated to Noosa alone. I found solace in the rhythm of the tide and drew strength from repeating old childhood rituals.

I didn’t go back for many years after that. I was busy travelling the world, even though every beach I visited would inevitably be compared to Noosa. I still think it has the best beaches in Australia, even after travelling around the country to write a book on the subject.

I eventually broke the drought when I became a father. Perhaps it’s the robust migratory instinct, but since my boys have been born I’ve had a strong urge to take them to my happy place – to throw them screaming into the waves, catch crabs in the rockpools, and teach them to skewer a frozen prawn on the end of a hook.

I realise now that my parents’ discovery couldn’t happen today. Satnav-enabled cars mean there’s no chance of getting lost and finding something unexpected off-grid. You can learn everything about a place, even the smallest towns, just by searching online or asking AI. Secret hideaways don’t stay secret for long.

And while Noosa has grown significantly since the 1980s – adding food and music festivals, triathlons, new complex developments and restaurant openings – there’s still pixie dust mingled in the sand that will always call me home.

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