Sponsored by Sunshine Coast Tourism and Tourism Queensland
The first thing you notice on the Great Beach Drive is the sound: tyres whispering over hard-packed sand, waves crashing on the East and birds singing up ahead. The fact that you’re driving on a beach in a four-by-four vehicle is a marvel you barely notice once you hit the gas pedal.
This is a scenic beach drive on the Sunshine Coast that allows you to experience nature stripped back to the bare bones – flanked by the wild shoreline, towering sand dunes, and red rock faces of the Great Sandy Biosphere, this is 50km of pure unspoiled wilderness.
Stretching from Noosa to Rainbow Beach, the Great Beach Drive is not just a road trip, but an adventure. Along the way you pass rainbow-coloured cliffs, shipwrecks half-swallowed by surf, and humpbacks breaching offshore.
If you’re looking to embark on the Great Beach Drive on the Sunshine Coast but not sure how to do it, what to see along the way, or where to begin with your planning, the following Great Beach Drive itinerary will tell you everything you need to know.
Checking tide times before you go, and be sure to pack your sense of adventure.
Australia’s Sunshine Coast Great Beach Drive is a scenic drive on the beach from Noosa’s North Shore to Rainbow Beach. It stretches for 50 kilometres and is also known as the Cooloola Coast, a remote strip of beach backed by the Great Sandy Biosphere Reserves, one of three UNESCO biospheres on the Sunshine Coast.
The Great Beach Drive is known as one of Australia’s best shortcuts because instead of taking the M1 (Bruce Highway) from the Sunshine Coast to Rainbow Beach via Gympie, you take the prettier and quicker Beach Highway. Why take the busy and boring M1 when you can take Australia’s nature coast expressway?! This is my kind of commute.
On one side you have miles of sparkling Pacific Ocean and on the other the Great Sandy National Park.
Teewah Beach is the entry point to the UNESCO Great Sandy Biosphere, which takes in rainforest, marine parks and ancient sand dunes, and is home to countless rare and endangered animals, as well as over half of Australia’s bird species.
From Rainbow Beach, you can turn inland and head back to visit other parts of the Sunshine Coast, such as Tin Can Bay or Gympie, or extend your trip over to K’Gari (Fraser Island) or Hervey Bay.
Before commencing your beach drive be sure to purchase a daily vehicle access permit for Cooloola Recreation Area. It’s a small fee and can be purchased online here. Or, you can head to The Great Sandy Information Centre located at 240 Moorindil Street, Tewantin.
We picked up our 4×4 at Fleet Crew in Brisbane and drove from there. If you are leaving from Brisbane or The Gold Coast, it’s a 3.5-hour drive to the gateway to the Great Beach Drive at Teewah. Once you pass Noosa North Shore, your adventure begins at Tewantin, down the road from Noosaville on the Sunshine Coast.
To get to the beach, you must take a ferry. The Noosa North Shore Car Ferry dropped us across the river heads to Noosa’s North Shore. The ferry operates seven days a week and prices vary depending on the size of your vehicle. You can book the ferry online from here.
Once you drive off the ferry, follow the road all the way to the coastline and take the third sand exit onto the beach. You’ve just entered paradise. No traffic lights on this road, and if you avoid the peak Christmas and Easter holidays, little traffic.
This long stretch of beach is also known as Teewah Beach and even though you’re driving on sand, normal road rules apply, including a speed limit of 60 km/hr.
Another important thing to note is when low and high tide is, as you only want to be driving along this stretch for two hours on either side of LOW tide!
On the way up the beach take the opportunity to stop (safely) and take some ocean shots and photos of the bordering the National Park.
While we highly recommend you do the Great Beach Drive yourself, we know that is not always a possibility. This 6-hour 4WD tour from Noosa can take care of all those challenging travel logistics for you. Just show up and enjoy the magnificent views. And if you don’t like groups, you can opt for this small, private tour that allows for customization for your itinerary.
Of course, driving on the Great Beach Drive is an experience in itself. If you’ve never driven on a beach before there’s something about the soothing sound of the waves close by and the fresh air on your face.
But it’s not all about the drive. There are plenty of stops along the way that you should take to break up the journey.
The following itinerary can be completed in a day, but you might want to return to Rainbow Beach to explore more the next day, depending on how much time you have available and how long you want to spend at each place. You can view the stops on this itinerary in the above interactive map to help you plan your route.
The journey begins at the southern end of Teewah Beach, on a sandy headland next to where the Noosa River meets the ocean and overlooking Noosa Heads Main Beach.
Slipping off the bitumen and onto the sand, this entry point reveals an immediate sense of departure – away from the suburbs, the buildings, and everything you know about normal road driving.
Be sure to drop your tyre pressures, and don’t be afraid of the gas pedal. Soon, the wild coastal landscape framed by the ochre cliffs opens before you and you’ll be free to explore at your own pace.
The sand of Teewah Beach is generally hard-packed and forgiving at low tide, but do check tide times before you drive as conditions can change quickly.
The Red Canyon is one of the most impressive spots on The Great Beach Drive. The canyon is made up of vibrant red and yellow rock formations, which were once used as a meeting place by the indigenous Gubbi Gubbi people. It is said it was a secret meeting place for women of the tribe.
You can hike up to the top of the canyon and get incredible views of the Teawah Beach below and also get a close up view of the different colours.
At the end of Teewah Beach is Double Island Point, and we timed our stop perfectly to coincide with a lunch break. We parked our car at the bottom and did the two-kilometre walk up the headland to the Double Island Point Lighthouse, which offered spectacular ocean and beach views over Teewah Beach and all the way to the Fraser Coast.
It was a great opportunity to get out of the car and stretch our legs. We took a light lunch and let the kids run off some energy around the base of the lighthouse.
If you don’t do lunch here, at least take a bottle of water on the walk, especially in the summer months! And keep your eyes peeled for a pod of dolphins surfing the waves.
You can also take the short Leisha Track, an inland track from Double Island Point to the Teewah coast. This track takes you into the sand dunes for a bit of dune bashing fun! And of course, look out for those migrating whales in season (July – November)!
Carlo Sand Blow is a vast, shifting dune that rises above the coastline near Rainbow Beach. It’s recognisable by its enormity – this massive sand mass looks like it’s spilling over a mountain into the sea, and you can often see paragliders launching off from it.
Accessed by a short walk from the beach, Carlo Sand Blow is best visited late afternoon as this is when you can see your shadow lengthen and the sand feels cool under your feet.
The landscape is stark and exposed, with little vegetation, and if you stay for sunset, the dune transforms into a canvas of golds and soft pinks.
Back in our car, we drove along the short access road and entered Rainbow Beach, and were like wow! Another whole world of paradise opened up before our eyes.
We headed towards the town of Rainbow Beach passing the famous multi-coloured sands with different shades of yellow, oranges and reds, as well as cliffs with the same colours along the way. It was possibly the most spectacular stretch of the whole beach drive.
Time your drive with the tide is super important here as the water comes right in against the cliffs. It was getting on in the day and the tide was coming in, so we had to time our moments with the water retreating after the waves had come in.
We made it around the bend to town and grabbed a coffee whilst the kids played at the playground overlooking the beach below.
Rainbow Beach is a tiny town with a holiday vibe at the base of the Inskip Peninsula. If you want to, you can even continue your Great Beach Drive with easy access to Fraser Island, only another 10 minutes away by barge.
Our drive ended here, but it was not the end of our adventures. We switched from the motorised version of 4×4 for a four-legged animal, and then went back to take on Rainbow Beach on horseback.
Rainbow Beach is special in more ways than one, being one of the only places in the State where you can go horse riding on a beach. This was going to be a unique family experience for us. We’d ridden horses before along trails, but never along the edge of the surf on a pristine stretch of beach.
Andrew, owner of Rainbow Beach Horse Rides enthusiastically mentioned that Rainbow Beach had been featured on the front cover of the 2012 publication of “101 best beaches of Australia”. And the Huffington Post ranked it at number 5 in their article “Nine of the Most Incredible Beaches in the World.” That’s some pretty good creds right there!
Andrew and his crew carefully matched us up with our horses, and little three-year-old Savannah even had her own horse, which was so cute, and was led along the beach by Andrew on his horse. She did awesomely! As did Kalyra who was also safely led.
Of course, we declined the opportunity to trot or canter, and simply relaxed as we rode for 90 minutes up and down the beach.
The area in which they conduct their rides is the only stretch of beach between Noosa and the Northern tip of Fraser Island (about 300 kilometres) where vehicles are not allowed.
Again, if you time your visit right for whale season, being on horseback gives you extra elevation for spotting whales and dolphins. But if you don’t visit in whale season there’s every chance you’ll be treated to another show like us, as Rainbow Beach lived up to its name and displayed a beautiful rainbow that framed our family photo.
Not only that, but across the water, you have World Heritage-listed Fraser Island as your backdrop. Can it get much better?
Rainbow Beach Horse Rides offers beach rides, full moon rides, swimming rides, night rides, and country rides. Tell Andrew we said hi and you heard about them from us!
One of the drawbacks we had with our road trip was the countless setting up and packing up of our camper trailer. It wears thin after a while, especially if you’re constantly moving around. So it was a refreshing change to just rock up to our campsite on the Inskip Peninsula and literally have everything already set up.
The tent, the beds, the large tarp containing the kitchen and dining area, the portable shower and toilet, the tables and chairs, and all the food and drink chilling in the big esky. You name it, it was ready to go!
All we had to do was kick back in our camp chair. Caz claimed the hammock, with a cold drink in hand as the kids played on the beach in front of us.
Did I mention we had absolute beach frontage and a fire pit ready to go for toasting marshmallows later in the evening? Pure bliss.
Although I did have to get up out of my camp chair to take a snappy of the sun going down. And to drag Caz out of her hammock to help prepare our dinner, lol.
After dinner, we sat mesmerized around the fire, toasted up those marshmallows with the kids, enjoyed a few red wines, and fell asleep to the calming sound of the ocean.
The next morning we simply rolled out of bed, took a morning walk along the beach, and ate breakfast by the ocean. This is stress-free camping all the way and would be an awesome option for a large family or group of friends who don’t own their own equipment or don’t have the time and energy for set up.
Rainbow Beach Hire a Camp is owned and operated by the friendly Rachel who leaves nothing to spare. How about these benefits:
The Inskip Peninsula Protected area overlooks World Heritage Listed Fraser Island and the Great Sandy Biosphere. You can catch a small barge from Inskip point across to the southern tip of Fraser Island.
If you don’t want to camp, you can stay in the small community at Rainbow Beach. You may like the Rainbow Sea Resort or the Rainbow Ocean Palms Resort.
From here, you can either return back to Noosa along the beach or highway or continue on to explore other parts of the Sunshine Coast – yes you should!
The Great Beach Drive is sandwiched between the Sunshine Coast and the Fraser Coast, two of the most pristine and spectacular areas in Queensland. Here are a few other things we recommend you fit into your Great Beach Drive itinerary
We decided to make it an extra-long weekend away and the day before we started our Great Beach Drive, we stopped off at Australia Zoo on the way up to Noosaville from our home on the Gold Coast.
Australia Zoo is an hour’s drive north of Brisbane, and after picking up our hire car arrived in time to catch the famed Wildlife Warriors Show at the Crocoseum, brought to life by the late great Steve Irwin himself.
This show was Steve’s dream, a way to show and educate people about crocs and how they behave in the wild. We’ve seen a few croc shows around the country and this one is still the best.
The large salty put on a death roll display and launches itself full body from the water snapping at its prey. Also on display are free-flight birds, snakes, and dingoes.
From the crocoseum, we ducked next door to see the koalas, and one mummy had a baby cuddled up with her and crawled onto her back. We’ve never seen a baby koala before; this was amazing and so cute!!
We passed through the kangaroo enclosure and then close by was the majestic Sumatran tigers at the Tiger Temple. The girls were in awe of the size of these big cats and their power and leaping ability.
A new addition at the zoo is Bindi’s Island – an island wildlife haven where ring-tailed lemurs roam free and you can see giant Aldabra tortoises, macaws, boa constrictors, and an alligator snapping turtle. Climb up into Bindi’s three-story treehouse for sweeping views of the zoo.
Next up we headed to the African Savannah section to see the family of giraffes, white rhinos, zebras, and cheetahs.
Our half-day zoo visit concluded at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital next door in the main car park where for a small donation you can take a sneak peek inside the hospital.
This facility treats injured native wildlife from around the region, and so far over 58,000 native animals have been treated here in its 11-year history! Little Savannah was precious as she sat caringly next to a sick koala who was still under anesthetic after surgery.
We stayed overnight in Noosaville at the Ivory Palms, a tropical resort 90 minutes north of Brisbane, before starting our Great Beach Drive early the next day.
Noosaville is located along the picturesque Noosa river with plenty of cafes, and parks and is a quieter alternative to staying in Noosa itself. Be sure to take a walk along the foreshore.
If you time your visit right, we like the Sunday Farmer’s Market in Noosa. The absolute best smoothie we’ve ever had was from The Sunflower Hotel store.
We had a delicious dinner at the Boat House Restaurant right on the water, which would be even better in the daytime so you could appreciate the beautiful view.
The Noosa everglades are a series of waterways and tropical wetland and swampy land that connect the Northern Noosa River system to the ocean near the Sunshine Coast.
The everglades are nestled among two UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, the Noosa and the Cooloola region of the Great Sandy National Park.
We decided to kayak a 16 km round trip from Lake Cootharaba, which took us out into the middle of nowhere in a pristine natural environment with only the sounds of the birds flying and the water lapping against our boat and the lily pads.
Or you can combine a short kayaking trip with a boat tour, if you don’t fancy paddling for too long.
Want to experience a boat cruise and try your hand at kayaking or canoeing? Then check out this boat cruise and kayak tour of the Noosa Everglades! Read our guide to the Noosa Everglades here!
Although it’s located a little further north of the Great Beach Drive, you should definitely consider taking a trip over to Hervey Bay once you completed the trip.
It’s one of the number one beaches in Australia to see humpback whales during whale migrating season, because the waters are protected and calm – so they love to swim here to play in the warm waters.
We saw whales from Hervey Bay on a whale-watching tour and it was one of the highlights of our Australia road trip.
Read more: Things to do in Hervey Bay
No doubt one of the main reasons to do the Great Beach Drive from the Sunshine Coast is to eventually end up at Fraser Island, or K’gari as it’s known to the aboriginal people.
Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and is where you can continue the 4×4 beach drive adventures, since the only road on the island is the 75 mile beach highway.
Stop off at the freshwater lakes such as Lake McKenzie or Lake Wabby for a swim in the crystal-clear cool waters, hunt for shipwrecks on the ocean shoreline, take a trip to the Champagne Pools or Eli Creek, look out for dingoes who live on the island, or take a scenic flight to spot whales off the coast.
Fraser Island is packed full of adventurous attractions and endless fun, so it would be a shame to complete this Great Beach Drive and not take the vehicle ferry across the most exciting island in Australia!
Read our top things to do on Fraser Island and how to do Fraser Island in a day
The Great Beach Drive is not just a way to get off the conventional way of travel and experience the thrill of adventure, but it also puts you closer to nature, having been surrounded by an abundance of wildlife that is native to Australia, such as Kangaroos, turtles, whales, dolphins and thousands of bird species.
As well as this, you get to stop at white sandy beaches and camp next to the ocean, sipping beer while stargazing in a space that is unpolluted with street lights.
Wake up at sunrise and see migrating whales swimming off the shore (if you travel between July and November). For many, it’s a once in a lifetime experience. So for these reasons, it’s absolutely worth it to do the Great Beach Drive.
The best time to visit the Great Beach Drive is between the months of July to September as there’s the chance of spotting migrating whales who head north to warmer waters along Australia’s East Coast.
We were a little early for whales but were having so much fun making tracks in the yellow sands and exploring a unique part of Australia we had yet to visit.
Here’s what people usually ask us about the Great Beach Drive…
The Great Beach Drive is 85.1 miles or 137 kilometers, and takes approximately 2 hours to drive the whole stretch without stopping, or 4-5 hours with stops. However, there are plenty of stops along the way so don’t rush it.
You can do the Great Beach Drive in a day, but we recommend taking it slow and setting aside 2 days.
Yes, you need a four-wheel drive vehicle. A normal car would not be able to get through the sand, so make sure to hire a 4×4.
Of the 55,000 kilometres we drove around Australia on our 18-month road trip, only once did we venture onto the beach in our own vehicle. We didn’t have a four-wheel drive, therefore beach driving wasn’t an option, and we had to stick to bitumen or solid dirt roads.
The Great Beach Drive on the Sunshine Coast was our first experience with four-wheel driving on the bea
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