Sunshine Coast Walks

For the last year or so, I’ve been working on a new book of walks for the Sunshine Coast. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s about an hour’s drive north of the city of Brisbane in Australia and extends to the resort town of Noosa and beyond.

It would be hard to find a more beautiful area for walking and exploring than the Sunshine Coast. There are golden beaches, pretty hinterland and coastal villages, rainforests and spectacular volcanic mountains. And for those, like myself and my co-author Virginia Balfour, who like to end our walk with a visit to a cafe, there seems to be an extraordinarily large number of great French patisseries and cafes along the Sunshine Coast. We always stopped in for a coffee and cake – for professional reasons of course – to check walking path notes, maps and photos!

The book is at the printers at the moment and should be in book shops by the end of November 2010, certainly in time for Christmas. You can order from bookshops now – they’ll just need the title and authors’ name: “Best Village and Coastal Walks of the Sunshine Coast” by Dianne McLay & Virginia Balfour. If you’re not in Australia, it’s possible to order directly from the publisher Woodslane and they’ll ship overseas.

Best Village & Coastal Walks of the Sunshine Coast

Spring in Brisbane

I love this time of year in Brisbane. It’s just warm enough for swimming, but still a pleasant temperature for taking a walk along Brisbane’s many beautiful walking tracks. Spring flowers are starting to bloom and you’ll see frangipani flowers beginning to unfurl. 

Frangipani Flower Brisbane

One of my favourite Brisbane trees is the Mulberry because of its delicious fruit. You might see them leaning over fences, on spare allotments once occupied by old houses, or sometimes growing wild. The fruit is ripe when it’s a deep purple colour, almost black. Beware though, they do stain. If your fingers become stained with Mulberry juice, pick an unripe fruit (very pale red colour) and rub it on the stain. My backyard tree has been giving us fruit for a few weeks now, enough to make a yummy mulberry pie.

Mulberries