When we were here 28 years ago, Noosa was a relatively sleepy town. Lovely beaches and a beautiful national park, we would struggle to have called it up market. Now we would have to describe it as up something else! The town had changed beyond recognition. The place where we stayed on the modestly named Sunshine Beach had been knocked down and Sunshine Beach was now made up of houses where the prices look more like phone numbers. The main shopping street – Hastings Street – had shops which reflected this. We didn’t stop for long and certainly didn’t shop for long as they might not even have let us into the shops for fear of putting the proper customers off. However, the sun came out when we parked at the spit and the beaches and the national park – Noosa Heads – remained as beautiful as ever. Thankfully they have been preserved.
It was fascinating to look round, but we then headed off to a more ‘normal’ town – Boreen Point. We had lunch in a traditional hotel – a lovely Queensland colonial style building. From there we headed off to Lake Cootharaba. This is actually part of the Noosa River as it flows out through Noosa, but is a wide open, but fairly shallow lake area. There was a sailing club there as well – mostly Hobie Cats and other catamarans and trimarans which seem ideally suited for here.
On the edge of the lake was a plaque to Eliza Fraser. Fraser Island – just offshore from here – is Queensland’s largest island and is thought to be the largest sand island in the world at 1,840 square kilometres. It is named after Eliza Fraser, who survived a shipwreck north of Fraser Island and was eventually rescued by a convict – John Graham.
There does seem to be some controversy over her story with official records differing slightly from her more ‘exciting’ version. She claimed to have been captured and ill-treated by the Badtjala people on the island, but other survivors were apparently treated well. Her claims led to the massacre and dispossession of the tribe. She also claimed to have been taken advantage of by her rescuer David Bracewell and taken to Brisbane, but once again, official records showed it to be John Graham who dropped her in Noosa. The fiction may have been more exciting than the fact, or she may have simply been smoking some local flora …..
Her loose association with truth and honesty continued as she married another sea captain in Sydney (her first husband died when the ship was wrecked) and went back to London. On arrival she appeared before the Mayor of London asking for a charity appeal to support her and her three children saying that her husband had died and she was penniless. She conveniently forgot to mention that she had remarried and had been awarded £400 by a fund in Sydney set up to help her. Her moral compass would have made her a good candidate to be a politician.