By 8.30am I'm up at Park Edge Rd meeting my walking companions. We're going across the high dunes down to Alexandria Bay and up onto the headland. First time for my friends.
It's heavily overcast and windy.We step from the street of houses straight into wallum woodland and trade greetings with the forest. It's so quiet in here, just one lone butcher bird come to welcome us and he's not up for a song in this weather.
I've never seen the forest so dry that the leaves are hanging, so thirsty. A stand of hardy blechnum ferns claims the track edge but there's little else in the forest under-storey but leaf litter.
Trees take on grotesque shapes. A big mama curls her arms every which way.
We chat to an older Sunshine Coaster who gives my friends the heads up for walking barefoot.
The track softens into velvet white sand and climbs into "the garden", the glorious wallum heath of the high dunes. Banksia leaves have turned a rich gold with the dry season and the larger trees are sporting banksia men aplenty…the peculiar hairy and "wild man" seed cones.
My friends are in bliss mode with the beauty of the wallum heath. We share an enraptured little chat with a couple of young backpacking men from Germany with beautiful English. Nature lovers at 19. Yay!
How many of us can speak beautiful accent free German, I wonder?
There's something different in flower at every season and I'm delighted to see the little eucalypts that grow here in full flower with creamy honey-filled bunches bursting from their branches.
The sky and wind are still sombre enough to quiet the birds and it's a little strange to walk the wallum without their familiar orchestra.
It's a place of magic for the artist's eye and our cameras are busy capturing texture, colour and form. An explosion of slender green lines shoots forth from the snakeskin patterned trunk of a grass tree.
The sculptured lines and creamy lime greens of banksia bloom draw attention across the top of the low growth towards the taller forest edge. Streaks of thick whites paint the lavender grey trunks of a gum. Green and gold whorls of banksia and grass trees swirl through the lower storey.
This glorious garden of Nature atop the high dunes opens to the skies and views of the ocean. In the driest season, Nature displays her extraordinary resilience by throwing out plump stalks of velvety russet new leaves on a young banksia.
The cloud cover is gradually opening to patches of blue and sunshine as we leave the "garden" and make the descent once again through woodland. I'm surprised to see the tall casuarinas so sparse in leaf. So very dry. Grass trees have some age here.
I find another plant in flower that I've not seen before. Tiny green flowers on a waist high spindly bush. I take a shot and hope my reference books or a blog reader can ID.
The swamp is as lush with ferns as ever. A climbing maidenhair fern scrambles across a tangle of grasses and ferns. Soft papery trunks lift into the sunlight. Under the boardwalk, the trickling tea-coloured waters hold the world reflected.
The track climbs through woodland again and now the ocean's roar and pandanus by the track signal that we have arrived at Alex Bay. I catch a few images of goatsfoot in flower on the shore dunes.
The surf is heaving, a huge emerald green foaming thrash of an ocean. The windy weather has discouraged the humans who usually populate this beach, so we walk the beach with just a few.
We climb up to the headland and wander through the sighing casuarinas and soft grass carpet, one of my all-time favourite places. It's summer so no golden paper daisies, but here and there amongst the ochre rocks, the little blue jewels of evolvulus.
We take a little space to just sit and be.
Ah but time pushes on and meetings await. Time to return. Sigh.
So we wend our way back along the beach and through the many tracks that are marked with the number 5 arrow, finding a different return route.
And here's another unknown plant in flower and fruit. It's a scrambling vine with milky white sap and a very colourful fruit (do not eat!), small creamy white flowers off the main vine. A very vigorous plant, spreading everywhere. Another one to ID.
The heat of the day is a little taxing now as we return, but the birds are singing with the sunshine. We give our thanks to the forest, and each other, and emerge to go our different ways.
This walk is around 5.5ks return (Noosa National Park, Sunshine Coast Qld, Australia).
It's a beautiful place to commune with Nature but important to take responsible care of personal safety re swimming and dangerous surf, waves washing onto rock ledges, and safety around high cliffs. Further information is available from Noosa National Parks website.
