Coolum Beach

I’m Tilda, and after about ten weekends working on this page with the rest of our team I can say it out loud: Coolum is the Sunshine Coast town we keep sending friends to when they ring us asking where to go that isn’t Noosa. It sits between Maroochydore and Noosa Heads, far enough north of the airport that the trip feels like a proper drive, close enough to the action that you’re never bored. The beach is patrolled and family-shaped, the headland walk up Mount Coolum will quietly humble you, and the main street still has bakeries and surf shops instead of a wall of luxury labels. We’ve been coming here on and off for years and the place stubbornly refuses to lose its low-key soul.

What follows is the version of Coolum we’d hand a first-time visitor over a long black at one of the David Low Way cafes. It’s not the glossy brochure. It’s the “here’s what we actually do when we’re up there” version.

Where Coolum fits on the Sunshine Coast

The Sunshine Coast strings together a run of beach towns north of Brisbane, and Coolum is roughly in the middle. To the south you have Mudjimba and Marcoola tucked in close to Sunshine Coast Airport. To the north it’s a quick coastal drive into Peregian, Sunrise Beach and the polish of our Noosa guide. Inland, the hinterland rises into Eumundi, Yandina and the macadamia country we’ve covered separately in our broader Sunshine Coast guide. Coolum’s own population sits around ten thousand, which is the sweet spot for us — enough to support a decent week of food, but small enough that you’ll see the same dog-walkers on the boardwalk two mornings running.

Geographically, the town wraps around Coolum Bay, with the headland and First Bay tucked at the southern end and the long sweep of beach rolling north toward Peregian. Mount Coolum, the basalt monolith that names the place, sits just inland and is visible from almost everywhere. Once you’ve climbed it you start using it as a compass.

Climbing Mount Coolum (yes, you should)

Mount Coolum is a 208-metre volcanic outcrop maintained by Queensland Parks & Wildlife Service as a national park, and the return walk takes us around an hour and a quarter at a relaxed pace. It’s steep enough that you’ll be properly warm at the top — the lower half is graded path, the upper half is bare rock with a chain handrail in the steepest section — but anyone with reasonable knees can do it. We’ve done it with grandparents and with children old enough to not need carrying. Best results before nine in the morning: smaller crowds, soft light, you avoid the worst of the sun on the exposed summit.

The view from the top is the thing. North along the dune line to Noosa National Park, south across the Maroochy River mouth, west into the Glasshouse Mountains on a clear day. It’s one of those rare hikes where the payoff genuinely matches the effort. Wear actual shoes — we’ve watched people try it in thongs and regret it.

The beach, the bays and Coolum’s surf

Coolum’s main beach is patrolled by surf lifesavers, has the red-and-yellow flags set out daily through summer, and is the kind of beach where you can roll up at ten with the kids and still have a parking spot. The Coolum Bays — First Bay, Second Bay, Third Bay and so on, tucked under the headland to the south — are smaller, more sheltered pockets that fill up later in the day with families who want a bit less wind. They link via a clifftop boardwalk that’s one of our favourite short walks on the whole coast.

For surfing, Coolum is a beach break, which means the banks shift through the year and what was working last Easter might not be working this one. It’s a perfectly good intermediate wave on a clean swell, and First Point at the headland can hold a longer right when the sand cooperates. If you’re learning, our team usually points first-timers to the patrolled main beach, between the flags, in the morning when the wind’s still offshore.

The old Hyatt and the Palmer Coolum saga

You’ll see signs and locals still calling the big inland resort “the Hyatt”, even though Hyatt Regency Coolum hasn’t carried that name for over a decade. It was the Sunshine Coast’s flagship resort through the 1990s, with two championship golf courses and a sprawl of villas. Clive Palmer bought it in 2011, rebranded it Palmer Coolum Resort, and the property has been through a series of partial closures and reinvention attempts since. We’re not in the business of writing real estate gossip, but if you’re booking accommodation it’s worth knowing the place has changed hands and styles repeatedly — check current operations before relying on any of the on-site facilities.

The town doesn’t hinge on the resort the way it once did. Coolum’s centre of gravity has shifted firmly back to the beachfront over the last fifteen years, which most locals will tell you is the best thing that ever happened to it.

Eating and the morning walk

Coolum’s food scene is the unfussy Sunshine Coast version: good coffee, decent bakeries, a clutch of casual restaurants along David Low Way and Birtwill Street, and a couple of fish-and-chip operators near the surf club that we’ll happily queue at on a Friday. The Coolum Beach Surf Club itself is the standard issue surf-club bistro with the unbeatable feature of a deck looking straight across the sand to the water — we’ve done a lot of late lunches there over the years.

Our standard Coolum morning: bakery on Birtwill, coffee in a takeaway cup, boardwalk south along the bays to the headland lookout, back via the beach if the tide’s right. About ninety minutes, you’ve seen the best of the town, and you’ve earned a second coffee.

Where to stay

Coolum is mostly holiday apartments rather than hotel towers, which we like. The closer you are to the beach end of the main street, the more you’ll pay and the less you’ll need a car. A block back from the beach is the value sweet spot — you can walk everywhere and you’re ten minutes’ drive from the headland walk trailhead. There’s a caravan park run by the local council right on the foreshore at the southern end of town, which is a Sunshine Coast institution and books out a year ahead for school holidays.

For something quieter, the area between Coolum and Peregian has a string of low-rise developments with longer-stay apartments that suit families staying a week or more. Yaroomba, immediately south of the headland, is the closest you’ll find to dunes-and-not-much-else accommodation.

Day trips out of Coolum

From Coolum we tend to use the town as a base for the wider region. Noosa Heads and Hastings Street are twenty-five minutes north. Eumundi’s famous Wednesday and Saturday markets are a thirty-minute inland run that we’d do at least once per trip. The Glasshouse Mountains lookout is about an hour south — an excellent half-day if the weather’s clear. Maleny and Montville, the hinterland villages, are another excellent half-day if you like cheese, fudge and small bookshops, which our team unanimously does.

For longer-haul day trips, Brisbane is around ninety minutes south on the Bruce Highway and worth a city day if you’ve never seen the river or South Bank — see our Brisbane guide for the short version. Going the other way, Rainbow Beach is around an hour and three-quarters north and lets you put a toe in the southern end of K’gari (Fraser Island) without committing to a multi-day trip.

Getting there and getting around

Sunshine Coast Airport is fifteen minutes south at Marcoola, with direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne and a steadily growing domestic network. Brisbane Airport is around ninety minutes by road and the option most international visitors use. From either airport you really do want a car — the Coolum bus network is fine for the immediate strip but anything inland (hinterland, markets, Mount Coolum trailhead from outside town) is much easier with your own wheels. Parking in Coolum itself is free and reasonably easy outside school holidays.

The David Low Way is the slow coastal road that links all the beachside towns. The Sunshine Motorway is the faster inland route. We default to the Low Way when we’re not in a hurry — it’s prettier and the speed limit reminds you that you’re on holiday.

When to come

School holidays in Queensland (especially the September-October and December-January periods) are when Coolum is busiest, and prices reflect it. Our personal favourite windows are May and October — warm enough to swim, dry enough to walk Mount Coolum, no crowds. June and July are cooler but still very pleasant by southern Australian standards, and the whales are passing offshore on their migration; we’ve had good sightings from the headland with binoculars. Cyclones don’t typically reach this far south but heavy summer rain and king tides happen, so keep an eye on the forecast in February and March.

The two local council bodies worth bookmarking are Sunshine Coast Council for park closures and beach conditions, and Visit Sunshine Coast for events and what’s on. We check both before any trip up.

Why we keep coming back

If Noosa is the Sunshine Coast’s magazine cover and Mooloolaba is its loud cousin, Coolum is the friend who quietly suggests you all go for a walk and then makes lunch. There’s a particular slow-tempo Queensland summer feeling here that the rest of the coast has been steadily renovating out of itself, and we hope Coolum hangs onto it. The town doesn’t try too hard. The mountain’s there if you want to climb it, the beach is there if you want to read on it, and the bakery opens early enough that you don’t need to negotiate with anyone before coffee. That’ll do us.