Not every trip is Insta-worthy. Some are slow-motion train wrecks in paradise, where train tracks melt in the sun, and when you're in trouble, they just hand you a XXXX beer.1
Our story begins in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital. Australians call it “Brisvegas,” though why remains unclear. Casinos? Irony? Who knows. The city is split by the aimless, coffee-colored Brisbane River—known to locals as the Brown Snake—loops around in lazy, baffling curves. In the right light, if you squint hard enough, it almost looks picturesque. Most of the time, though, it looks more like the chocolate river from Willy Wonka, but without the fun or the Oompa Loompas.2 The skyline, rising out of subtropical haze, is not quite Sydney and not quite Melbourne. Heck, it’s not even quite Perth. It’s as if Brisbane collectively shrugged and decided, “Eh, close enough.”
The apex predator in Brisbane is its own weather, a humid beast that wraps around you like a damp towel someone left in the sun too long. Even the cockroaches walk around lazily, fanning themselves. And this was winter. Other Australians say Brisbane is a cultural graveyard, which is totally not fair. Graveyards have historical value.
After a month of sweating in Brisbane, we were ready to go. The road north beckoned, promising cooler breezes, better beaches, and—hopefully—better sights. The plan was to work our way 1,000 miles up the Queensland coast over eight weeks, stopping at a new beach town every week. It looked good on paper. But we should have known better. Brisbane wasn’t just a starting point—it was a warning we ignored. Things weren’t about to get easier. They were about to get stranger, hotter, and much more ridiculous.
Brisbane to Noosa Heads
Departure 11 a.m.
Travel time 2 hours
The journey from Brisbane to Noosa Heads began with just a hint of chaos. First, we arrived at the wrong train station, a rookie mistake. After some frantic shuffling and muttered curses, we arrived at the right station only to discover that trains, like airlines, have baggage limits. There was more agitation as we hurriedly bought a couple oversized polypropylene moving bags and redistributed our belongings like amateur smugglers. We did manage to board the train on time before collapsing into our seats. We might have looked like hobos on the lam, but at least we were moving.
The ride to Noosa Heads on the train was blessedly uneventful. Two hours of relative bliss interrupted only by the arrival of lunch—delivered to our seats and surprisingly edible. For a fleeting moment, I smugly considered us highly competent, road-tested travelers. That illusion shattered the moment we arrived at Cooroy,3 Noosa’s inconveniently distant train stop.
The Cooroy station is a study in minimalism: unmanned, with no cell service and no obvious way to leave. We stood there for an eternity, waiting for an Uber to materialize from the ether. Rick, ever resourceful, took the opportunity to dart across the road and return with a bottle of Maker's Mark, which I assumed was either celebratory or preemptive.
Our Airbnb, advertised as a “charming ground-floor retreat,” was, in fact, a tarted-up basement apartment beneath the owner’s home in a quiet cul-de-sac. It lacked a kitchen, but it had a pool—a bonus that felt less charming when we realized it was too cold to use. Still, the local beach club was within walking distance, so we set out, lured by the promise of cold beers and classic Aussie fare.
The trek to the beach club was worth it, as was dinner—a perfectly crispy chicken parm with a view of the ocean that almost justified the effort. The walk home, however, was another story. A moonless night and an unlit path made the return feel like the opening scene of a horror movie with several serial killers lurking in the shadows. Rick seemed unaware of the potential danger while I mentally drafted my obituary.4
Noosa Heads itself was a mix of stunning beaches and relentless pretension. Hastings Street, the town’s main drag, is a strip of overpriced boutiques and cafes where every flat white comes with a free side of judgment. The beach was gorgeous, of course, but swarming with influencers, retirees, yoga moms, and Brads, all vying for the perfect selfie or the best spot to display their linen shirts, tanned abs, and wide-brimmed straw hats.
Sunrise Beach, where we stayed, was the budget version of Noosa. No boutiques, no pretensions, and no crowds. As peaceful as a deserted ghost town. The beach stretched endlessly, its golden sand unmarred by so much as a footprint. It was unnervingly, almost post-apocalyptically empty, in fact.
By the time we packed up and headed back to Cooroy for our next train, we’d decided that Noosa was fine—lovely, even—but once was enough. As for Sunrise Beach, it was a pleasant reminder that sometimes, less really is more.
Noosa Heads to Urangan
Departure 1 p.m.
Travel time 2 hours
Our pre-booked Uber canceled on us the morning we left Sunrise Beach. At the exact moment, it was supposed to arrive. No kidding. I texted our Airbnb hostess from her own driveway to ask—beg, really—if she could drag us and all our worldly belongings to Cooroy, 40 minutes away, to catch our train. Bless her, she agreed without hesitation. Australians truly are the nicest people on Earth.
The train ride from Cooroy to Maryborough was smooth, as were the logistics. We arrived on time, transferred to a bus, and rolled into Urangan without incident. That should have been our first clue that the town itself wouldn't offer much excitement.
Maryborough, where we got off the train, proudly bills itself as the birthplace of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. Never mind that she fled this swampy hellhole as soon as her tiny legs could carry her and never looked back. There’s a statue of Mary Poppins in the town center that is more apology than tribute. If Mary Poppins was inspired by anything, it was Travers’ desperate hallucinations during a childhood fever brought on by living in this dank armpit of a town.
The bus took us through Hervey Bay,5 with its caravan parks and mobility scooters, seemed to cater exclusively to retirees whose biggest thrill was beating the 4 o’clock dinner rush. Technically a suburb of Hervey Bay, Urangan felt like an afterthought—a quieter, smaller version of a place already famous for being underwhelming. It was the kind of town where you couldn’t tell if things were closed for the day or just always.
The main draw in town is the Urangan Pier, a kilometer of weathered wood that juts out into the ocean. It's charming in the brochures. It's a long walk to nowhere in real life. After 20 minutes of walking, you're rewarded with…more ocean and a handful of fishermen6 staring blankly at the water, desperately trying to will something—anything—to happen.
The beach was “quietly idyllic.” Not unpleasant, just unremarkable. Most nights we spent on the patio overlooking the esplanade and that ridiculously long pier, staring at nothing in particular and wondering how tiny birds like lorikeets can make such a racket. Urangan wasn’t glamorous, but we liked it well enough. It’s a place where life moves at a pace that begs for a hammock and a good book. Our week there was perfectly fine, but we were ready to keep moving.
Urangan to Bargara
Departure 3 p.m.
Travel time 1 hour
The trip from Urangan to Bargara started strong. Our pre-booked cab back to Maryborough arrived on time, which was more deeply appreciated than our driver understood, and the train ride to Bundaberg was blessedly short.
Bundaberg7 is famous for rum, macadamia nuts, and high unemployment. But mostly the rum part. It’s basically a massive distillery that somehow earned itself a postal code. We didn't linger long in B-berg, as no one in Australia calls it, almost immediately getting an Uber to take us the eight short miles to Bargara. Looking back, we should’ve walked.
Our UberX8 driver was probably 80—or a really hard-earned 60—and his car was 14 years and 11 months old. We know this as a fact because he bragged about how it was technically one month shy of the cutoff that Uber requires. He then went on about how he recently had to change doctors because his old one kept hounding him to get glasses.9
“I can see just fine,” Driver told Doctor.
“No, you can’t,” Doctor said. “You can’t even read the second line of text in the eye test chart.”
“Don’t matter,” Driver said, “Road signs are printed bigger’n that.”
So Driver went to a new, more malleable doctor who didn’t nag him to get glasses.
Then there was the whole thing about how strong his adopted Papuan son was. He knows because the boy punched him in the face when he took away the kid's PlayStation recently. “What a punch,” Driver said.10
I made a mental note to check the status of our life insurance policies.
Bargara, “Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef,” is a sleepy coastal outpost that called it an early night many years ago. The town’s main strip was lined with a smattering of shops, mostly selling ice cream or “I ❤️ the Reef” trucker hats. Which barely mattered because none of them were open. And neither were any of the restaurants or even the pub. You know what was open? The liquor store.
Thank you, Australia.
Bargara to Yeppoon
Departure 4 p.m.
Travel time 3 hours
Our next leg, via Rockhampton, started with our by-now-familiar mix of optimism and overpacking. We’d mastered the art of dragging an unreasonable number of bags onto trains, taxis, and buses, all while projecting the illusion that we had things under control.
Reluctantly settled by stranded miners who'd run out of gold, patience, and better options, Rocky is now known as the Beef Capital of Australia. The town was less founded than endured by men who’d followed the gold rush only to find themselves stuck 30 miles inland from anywhere that mattered when the gold petered out. With no way to leave and no gold to mine, they set to work on what would become the town’s foundational industries—drunkenness, brawling, and whoring.11
We caught a ride to Yeppoon, a beach that clearly couldn’t quite decide whether it wanted to be a sleepy coastal village or a bustling tourist hub. So it somehow fails at both. Most of the locals commute to Rockhampton for work, which feels like the ultimate insult—spending half your life in a second-rate seaside town just to toil your days away in the hellhole up the road.
Despite being the town where the dreams go to die, Yeppoon’s location is stellar. Perched at the edge of Keppel Bay, the town has a view of some of the most stunning islands off Queensland’s coast. It’s almost enough to make you forget how utterly unremarkable where you’re standing is. Almost.
A major drawback for us, though? Our next train departed at 10. At night. I spent plenty of time at the pool in Yeppoon, dreading that night train.
This seems as good a place as any to take
a break. Go on—get yourself something
to drink, walk around a little, take
a breath. Things only get crazier.
When you're rested, click here for Part II!
7. Which is not, as I’d assumed, named after the dashing serial killer Ted Bundy. That would at least have given it a macabre allure. Nope, they named it by combining Aboriginal and German words, translating roughly to “place of the important man.” So boring.
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