Double Island Point
With the new year rolling around it was time to get Frodo back onto the sand for a trip up the sandy coast. She’d been sitting pretty on the sidewalk since September and was in serious need of a bash and crash off road.
This time’s destination was Double Island Point with a thought towards parking up on the beach next to the water, a few beers and a bit of a surf off the Point.
My brother had been staying with us (he moved down to Melbourne in February 2020 and has been riding the COVID lockdown life ever since) since first week of January and we thought it would be a bit of fun to get out into the sun and hoof it up the beach with my Dad and Kaitlyn rounding out the crew.
So with the way I’ve had Frodo setup for the last year to year and a half we had to re-install the rear seats. Dad rocked on in the night before and together we hauled the seats out of storage and started re-installing. This is where we encountered snag number 1. The seats had been sitting in the garage since we moved up in September 2021 and with all the rain and mugginess running around the past 2 months mould had decided to make a home for itself in the seat fabric. I had run out of my special home made mould kill recipe (white vinegar and water - who knew, but it actually works really well and not hectically chemicalised!), so dad and I moseyed on down to the shops to grab a litre of white vinegar, fortunately they were still open at 7pm (remember sleepy coastal village vibes). After spraying the mould kill on the seats, we left them on the balcony to aerate and dry for a now morning install.
530am I roll out of bed sleepy eyed and in need of a coffee. I find dad downstairs chirpy and already whipping the coffee machine into shape. Dad, being an ex-farmer, has as long as I have remembered been a ‘wakeup at sparrows fart’ type of human, and the fact we have resident kookaburras (whom have been on a 4am tear over the summer) that hang outside the bedroom he’s been staying in means he’s always up well before the rest of us. Coffee brewed, we roll down into the garage and begin re-installing the seats. As dad’s throwing them down at me from the balcony, the homebrew mould kill seems to have done the trick, which is fantastic news. Roughly 45 minutes later and one missing bolt down we have the seats back in Frodo. Unfortunately the situation with this missing bolt isn’t one of those ones where we can just pretend it never existed, it was quite integral with the seat not swivelling on the diagonal and also it’s a car seat, so having bits and pieces bolted for safety is paramount. So, Dad and I decide a Bunnings trip is needed (is amazing how often these happen when Dad and I get together).
Anyway, the long and the short of it we return from Bunnings unsuccessful (dam metric vs. imperial thread) and either have to charge on with the trip, with one swivelling seatback or pull the plug on it. All of us have a quick roundtable discussion and decide one seatback swivelling on the diagonal won’t be that major of an issue. We figured that the base of the seat is to the car, one side of the seatback is bolted to the other seatback and the seatbelts are bolted in and working fine. It’s closing in on 730am now and we wanted to have already left. So we all set about packing the food, drinks, swimming stuff and surfboards into the car. While I’m on the roof tying down the surfboards on the roof I’ve asked dad to pass up a few of the tie downs in the car, some of these being in the back of the seat pockets. Next thing I hear dad give a holler of excitement and I see him appear out of the car with bolt in hand. He’d found the missing bolt!
Happy days, we’re all ready to set off, minus a stop on the way to get fuel, ice and a coffee we get to the Ferry around 9am to find a pretty decent queue waiting to get across to the North Shore via the ferry.
[for those that aren’t aware, there are two ways of getting to Double Island Point from the South. One is to hit the Bruce Highway North (from us) and rumble along the blacktop for 2 hours and then head East towards Rainbow Beach and then once on the beach back down South towards the point. The other way is to head into Noosaville, catch the ferry ($10 in cash) across the Noosa River and drive up the beach to the point, all up taking an hour if you’re not stuck in traffic waiting - we decided on option two. I’ll put a map down below for reference]
Once off the boat we drove on through the Northshore township and headed towards our beach entry, or the 3rd Cutting’ as it’s called on the maps. Before hitting the sand we stopped and deflated the tyres. Tyre deflation and tyre pressure is probably one of the most important things when it comes to off-roading (I’ll do a story and gear I use on that some other time).
Now for a generic weekend a couple of weeks after the school holidays had finished, the place sure was busier than expected. I suppose that’s just part of the COVID effect? Where every man and his dog has gone and got themselves a super off-road dooper wheeler? It also was an epic weekend. Sun was out in all its glory and hardly a breath of wind, so I suppose if we figured it was good to get out, most others would too.
The gnarliest bit of every beach drive is the entry and exit from the tar, concrete, main road etc. Going from road, then big drop onto the rutted out sand and straight into the hard sand usually has everyone diving for the sissy bars. Fortunately, it seemed that some work had been done on this one and it was pretty a pretty minimal and quick exchange to go from road to hard pack beach sand.
45 minutes it took us, to go from the Northshore beach entry / 3rd cutting to the Freshwater inland track. Not bad considering it’s 35kms and on sand. Beautiful thing is that once you’re on the hard pack sand it’s almost like driving on a highway and the speed limit is 80km/hr, with it dropping to 40km/hr through designated camping zones. 45minutes on the beach to the regular joe may seem like quite a long drive, but personally I love it. Nothing like looking out the window, fresh sea air on your face, waves crashing on one side and then the rolling dunes, forever changing, flashing by on the other, for me it’s very calming. But then driving on sand is softer and a lot more variable than tarmac driving. It’s a strange space between relaxed and alert.
Where you do need to be highly alert is when you come off the beach ‘highway’ onto the really cut up and soft sand to get onto the inland tracks - often there are other vehicles coming off the tracks, at pace, and its not always easy to see and the tracks are sometimes not wide enough to have two cars side by side. There are several inland tracks up towards the point, so you need to make sure you take the correct one. Freshwater is the first one up and takes you to the inland camping spot and then Leisha track is purely a cut through to the northern part of the point which takes you onto Rainbow Beach and towards Rainbow Beach Town.
Again, it was pretty easy getting off the highway onto the track - not too many cars going on or coming off. The inland track itself was pretty cruisy as well. The Parks team seems to have been doing some work on the tracks compared to last time - we really didn’t even need to be in 4WD! (just kidding)
Bumping along inland Leisha track gets us onto Rainbow beach, our final destination. It’s a bit of a fun exit off onto the beach as you have to do a short stop and either go left or right because in front of you is the lagoon. Generally we usually go left because that gets us onto the main beach where you can pull up and park right on the water. Today - was busy AF! You looked left, cars, you looked right, cars. Bumper of a day equals pumping DI! So we went left......and got nowhere. Pulling a U-turn we headed back up to the right towards the point. Now unfortunately the trail up to the park up by the point had been heavily eroded leaving just enough space for one car to get through. This was not ideal, considering we were rolling in on the tide coming in. Meaning that our time to chill would probably be cut in half - just goes to show how a slow start can really come back to bite you later.
We finally find a spot we can nudge into, haul on the handbrake, whip the awning out, crack a frothie and enjoy the view, essentially doing the exact same as the 67 vehicles and 127 other people. We decided food was to come later, but first we surf (aka fall off a surfboard). Where we pulled up, the waves were not very enthusing. So we decided to haul the boards off the top of the car and go for a trundle up the beach towards the point, where we could see a neat set of waves coming from around the corner with a few people riding them towards us. Now my brother and I are no expert surfers, but hey we try. I decided to take the ‘green monster’ (Elnino 8ft Softboard) and my brother decided to take the ‘nosebuster’ long board (Caloola 9ftish Longboard). Dad and Kaitlyn decided they would spectate.
Dragging ourselves and the boards up the beach, past all the cool, pumped up and hectic vehicles sunning themselves on the beach we get to the point and check things out. Turns out it’s a bit of a false point, with the rocks jutting out and another mini beach swerving in towards the hill, between the two ‘points’, with some more trucks parked up. My first thought is that these guys are brave. The track to drive into this beach is barely a car width wide and with the tide coming in, it looks like it’ll be shrinking up very soon. Ah well, not my car and you would hope they know what they’re doing. Turning back to the waves now, my brother and I head towards the actual point to try and catch the current out from the sweep off the rocks and into the waves. The current is a bit stronger than we anticipated and we get pushed out into the middle of the waves, as they’re crashing. Luckily I manage to push past and catch a shoulder and ride down past the point towards the beach, my brother, not so lucky, got caught in the middle and I see his longboard rocket up into the air with him somewhere in the the whitewash. Once my wave has died off I jump off and start paddling back into the beach. I can see there are two methods the surfers are using to make there way back behind the break. Some are pushing back out deeper to the north of the break (further to sea) and paddling back up that way and then others are heading back into the beach to walk their boards back up. I settle with the walk and drag option due to where I jumped off the wave. Back on the beach I push on up towards the point and this time I angle myself more towards the rocks and then shoot into the current and luckily times it well that I was between the sets and didn’t get smashed by a wave. The current is still quite strong closer to the rocks so I push further out and to the outside of the break where I pull up and scan for my brother. I see he’s copied me and is about to nudge off the beach along the rocks. I see that there is what looks like quite a large wave coming through, so I’m hoping he’s seen it and waits. But he hasn’t looked and is heading straight forward. Fortunately it holds off and he makes it over and is next to me in a few minutes. Both of us manage to make our way out to the back of the waves with 3 or 4 other surfers and a couple of stand up paddle boards.
The next hour or so is made up of trying to catch waves, riding some waves and falling off multiple times. Great thing about the green monster is that it’s so easy to paddle so the current close to shore isn’t that much of an issue if you can time it right, but it does make for some hairy times if you don’t time the paddle back out, the lack of duck diving capability makes you a prime target for a crashing wave and a washing machine session.
The waves themselves are a heap of fun and perfect for us novices. They were quite big and were on the bigger end of what I’ve previously surfed, but they weren’t steep and rolled along nicely. I’m not massively across the surfing lingo, so I am probably not describing it correctly, but hey it’s what it looked and felt like to me at the time. The rolling nature of the waves and the fast paddling capability of our more ‘volumptuous’ boards made getting on a dream and the non-dumpiness of the waves took away any fear of getting grounded and pounded under the big lip, if you steered towards the shoulder of the wave. There was a couple of times I saw my brother just go dead straight and end up going ass over face when the wave crashed over him. Luckily the water was deep and he was fine every time, so was more of a giggle situation than a hold your breath and hope he’s ok situation.
Towards the end of the hour the current and tide must have changed because the waves dropped off a bit. It allowed for a bit of time to sit on the board and just absorb the situation we were in. It’s times like those I appreciate the most as you realise how lucky you are to live in such an epic spot and be capable of venturing out there into something close to paradise. The cloudless blue sky merged into the turquoise blue of the ocean. The white beach sand that was contrasted by the deep greens of the vegetation that grew on the point cliffs which then merged into the rainbow coloured sands of the rolling dunes that was aptly named Rainbow Beach. The bird life was abundant with gulls and other sea birds streaking across the sky and diving into the water and around the point. Even a sea turtle floated by!
Unfortunately we couldn’t stay here all day. Being conscious of the tide, we decided to head in and find the other two. I decided to catch one more wave and let the current carry me down the beach, my brother tried catching the same wave but headed in the other direction towards the beach. We found Kaitlyn and my dad having a yarn under the awning, beverages in hand. We had a quick pow wow and decided lunch was on before we needed to look at making a move off the beach within the hour. Lunch was pretty basic, with salad rolls being on the menu. Because we had taken the drawers and almost every other camping item out of Frodo, lunch was chaotic with food and towels and drinks everywhere. It really makes you appreciate a good rear drawer setup.
Alright, food punched, drone flown, pretty pictures taken it was time to rock and roll. Surfboards tied down, rubbish collected family members belted in, brother at the steering wheel (prayers said) we decided to drive on into rainbow beach town for a cheeky beverage in the Rainbow Beach Hotel (pub) and then a trek back through the inland trail back down to Noosaville. That was the plan at least, but as we made our way along Rainbow Beach, we could see the tide had come up quite high and was starting to lap very close to the sand dunes in places. Generally this wouldn’t be an issue, mostly, as you would be able to time the waves and drive to the next section. The issue is that at one of these little points are rocks that you can’t drive over and need to head towards the waves and then around the rocks before getting in the clear. We saw some vehicles in the distance playing dodgem with the waves and seeming to get around ok, but closer to us things were looking a little bit more sketchy. Considering past PTSD I have for getting bogged next to waves on a beach (a story for another time) and my brother’s nervousness to try play dodgem waves with my car, we decided to take the safe route and head back the way we had come. Unfortunately our pub and inland adventure would have to wait for another time.
The drive back down south along the beach was smooth and uneventful. Besides a short wait to get back onto the ferry towards Noosa, it was pretty quick and we found ourselves back home by around 4.30pm. All in all a great day and cracking way to kick off the new year’s adventures.
written by Gordon
