Yahoo Movies Noosa again? After Covid, back to normal for my family means back to the beach
The thick scent of burnt maple syrup is not the most obvious symbol of the beach, but it has signalled the start of my family holidays for more than 40 years.
On the descent into Noosa national park on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast it wafts through the air, triggering decades of memories. I’m not sure what the smell is from - maybe the pandanus palms that grow near the shore, or the approaching rainforest? But the smell and memory link is as strong here as anywhere I’ve known. This year it brings both joy and relief that Covid has finally let us return on our third attempt to holiday here in 12 months.
As a 12-year-old I surfed in the bay at the park’s entrance in a 10-foot swell, with the hubris of a kid who fancied herself on a boogie board. There were many dozens of surfers out that day in the aftermath of a cyclone, all with their gazes fixed on the huge sets barrelling in.
As the dusk drew in I had still not managed to catch a wave. A man in his 40s with a dark shaggy beard gestured me to follow him. “We’ll get a wave together and I’ll pull off so you can have it,” he said.
It’s been a place of sandy feet and Uno games. Of watching surfers at sunset and fish and chips on the beach
I paddled hard and he kept his word. I’ve never forgotten his kindness or the speed at which I raced down the wave’s face, my flimsy board almost buckling under the ocean’s power. I still have no idea how I scrambled out of the whitewater and over the rocks to shore.
Noosa may be known by many as an overpriced holiday destination but in my family it’s the place where my dad built some holiday flats in the late 70s and took some of his architect’s fees in timeshare weeks.
It was a big financial gamble. He commuted from Sydney for months to a place that hardly anyone had heard of back then. There were a few restaurants and a pub on the hill but not a great deal else.
It was a different lifetime. He deliberately didn’t install phone lines in the units so he couldn’t be disturbed on holiday. Imagine that.
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He had a feeling the place was the next “big thing”. The flats’ 70s decor has been upgraded over the years, but their solid frame tells the story of their era, before there was a Sofitel or a Sebel on the main street.
I was nine on our first holiday here and built dams and small sandcastles in the stream that still flows through Little Cove beach to the sea. My mother drew shapes in the sand with her toes as the sun set on her pale British skin. We glowed in the golden light of summer, unaware of the memories we were creating.
My own son disappeared from Little Cove beach when he was two and a half while I was feeding my baby daughter. Ten minutes of terror followed as I screamed his name up and down the sand and my parents frantically asked bathers if they had seen a toddler in a blue rashie with a shark on it. The panic was broken when a surfer called out that he had him.
He wasn’t in the ocean though. My toddler had walked himself off the beach when I said we were packing up. A woman had stopped him as he wandered through the national park carpark, concerned that there were no parents in tow. I don’t know how she worked out where he had come from. Maybe she heard the commotion. I was so shaken I didn’t tell my husband about it for weeks.
Almost every family summer holiday has been here, in the shadow of the national park’s rainforest. Various combinations of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and now my own teenage children have filled these flats.
It’s been a place of small pleasures, of sandy feet and Uno games. Of watching surfers at sunset and fish and chips on the beach. Of walks along the coastline and ice creams after dinner.
As a teenager, I brought my friends on our family holidays here and we competed for who could get the deepest summer tan. Covid intervened on my daughter’s attempt to bring a friend in January, but there will be more chances.
My kids have learned to body surf and boogie board in the usually gentle beach break. As toddlers, they ran naked out of the sunset ripples, with their grandparents there to wrap them up in towels. Now they appreciate the fine restaurants that line the main beach.
They grizzle sometimes about going to Noosa AGAIN, but I hope they too will remember the smell of burnt maple syrup and the genius idea their grandpa had of building some holiday flats on the doorstep of a rainforest that’s been here as long as time itself.
