KEY POINTS:
The Australian coast, you'd think, would be hard to miss. Its treacherous shores with reefs and sharks and stingers sound loud notes of caution. But the captain of the Cherry Venture, a 1600 tonne Singaporean cargo ship bound for Brisbane from Auckland, ran into it in July 1973, driven ashore by a ferocious storm and huge seas.
Without cargo, and with little ballast on board, the ship was at the mercy of wind and tide when it got too close to the lighthouse at Double Island Point, a Sunshine Coast landmark and popular surfing spot.
With 12m swells lifting the ship's propeller clear of the sea and the atrocious weather making a rescue impossible, the Cherry Venture was carried ashore on a king tide, snapping anchor cables dropped in a forlorn bid to hold the ship off the beach.
Today the wreck lies partly submerged in high tide sands on the Cooloola Coast, an hour's 4WD drive north of Noosa on hard beach sand.
This is Great Sandy National Park, a wilderness of mangroves, swampy heaths and flourishing bird life, with stretches of towering coloured sand dunes, sculpted by onshore winds which have exposed richly hued mineral bands.
The Carlo sandblow is an easy walk from Rainbow Beach, a pretty settlement popular with backpackers and beachcombers. Like many Aussie seaside towns, Rainbow has a surf club in a prime spot that serves a decent, pokie-subsidised bar feed. There's plenty of little cafes along the 100m main strip but for modern Australian cuisine, check out the Pavilion restaurant at Rainbow Shores resort or Waterview Bistro, which offers stunning views over the endless coastline.
Rainbow is a good base to poke around Cooloola. Cheaper than Noosa and celebrity free, it's a 40-minute drive from Gympie, an historic town which "saved Queensland". You wouldn't know it but a gold mine operates hundred of metres below Gympie. Gold from the Eldorado mine kept a bankrupt Queensland afloat in the 19th century.
The glory days are captured at the Gympie Gold Mining and Historical Museum. Run by volunteers and the sprightly 83-year-old Clive Knust, the museum gets inundated from time to time when the nearby Mary River floods.
The town is the terminus for the Valley Rattler, a tourist steam train which follows a 40km track through the Mary Valley, past pineapple crops, macadamia orchards and parched pasture.
Battle lines have formed against a plan to dam the Mary and send its water south to Brisbane, a project which threatens to drown pretty inland valleys, forests and farms.
Being Queensland, it'll probably happen, though there seem few alternatives. See it before it all goes under.
