Sea Change: Local Secrets, Honest Stories & the Real Sunshine Coast
The only thing on this coast that is still free is the hour before the sun.
At five in the morning at Coolum there is nobody on the sand but the dog walkers up at Stumers, one surfer out at First Bay and a seventy four year old man on a bench above the flags who has been sitting there since before I was born. The water is grey, then it is that green. Then the car park fills, the coffee queue starts, and the place turns back into the one on the postcards.
I am not from here. I came up from Brunswick in March 2021 with a laptop and a job I could do from anywhere, which makes me one of the people who did what everyone on this coast complains about. Coolum's median house is over a million and a half now. Rents are past eight hundred a week. I rent three streets back and I have been outbid twice. Ray, who has been in the surf club since nippers in the sixties, never once brought it up. He just kept talking, and after two years I had a notebook full of what he said, and this is that notebook cleaned up.
What's in it
The five o'clock beach. Where the light comes first, which bay to walk to at which tide, why the dry sand squeaks and the wet sand doesn't, what the surf club bulb means, and the etiquette of the bench.
The bays, properly. Main beach, First Bay, Second, Third, Point Perry, Point Arkwright, the boardwalk, Stumers Creek and its sixteen car spaces, and which one Ray means when he says the beach.
The rips. Coolum is rated relatively hazardous, and for a reason: persistent rips and a deep trough along the shore. Where the flags go, what the volunteers see that you don't, when the season runs, and the four words the lifeguards wish everyone would learn.
Whales, and where to stand. June to the end of October. Point Perry, Point Cartwright, Moffat, Alex, Dolphin Point. Where to stand in September and October when the mothers and calves come back past.
The money, honestly. What the sea changers of 2020 and 2021 did to Coolum, Alex, Mooloolaba and Maroochydore, suburb by suburb, who is driving in from Nambour now, and what the airport precinct fight at Marcoola is really about. Just the numbers and who they belong to.
Alex, Mooloolaba and the new city. The 2032 marathon at Alex, the stadium at Bokarina, the Maroochydore CBD that council took in house, and what the old surf club people think about all of it.
Up the hill. Mount Coolum, 208 metres and named for its blunt head, the montane heath that grows in only two places here, Eumundi on a Wednesday or a Saturday, the Glass House Mountains on a clear morning, and why Ray reckons the hinterland is where the real locals went.
Getting about without the motorway. David Low Way, the Yandina-Coolum Road roundabout and the ramps that are supposed to fix it, the airport terminal works, and what the school holidays do to every car park from Marcoola to Peregian.
A year on the bench. Month by month: the Noosa Tri weekend, the Ironman, the marathon in August, the daylight saving argument in October, the stingers, the wet, the quiet weeks in winter when Ray says the coast is yours again.
How it works
You pay, the link arrives, it opens on your phone before the sun is up. About sixty pages. The Coast changes fast, cafes shut, roads move, the airport hall finally opens, and when it does I update the book and every past buyer gets the new version free. Pay once and it stays current.
Who this is for
People thinking about the sea change who want the honest version before they sign anything. People who grew up here and moved to Brisbane or further and still check the Coolum cam. Anyone booking a week at Coolum, Alex or Mooloolaba who wants to know what the place is at five in the morning, not what it is at eleven. And anyone who has ever sat next to an old bloke on a bench and wished they'd written it down.
Ray says you can't buy the five o'clock. He is right, so far.
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Instant download. Any device. Written under the pen name Joel Wander.