Living on the coast you’d be hard pressed to find a garage without some form of paddle powered watercraft being used to catch dust. We have two such dust catchers, which I often look at and think “Oh yeah I must get that thing out on the water this summer…” only for it to turn a little too chilly to take it out before it catches my eye again.

Recently though I was walking around the boardwalk at Sunshine Cove, just off Maroochy Boulevard and noticed a new addition to the lake. Well two actually, the world’s smallest beach and on the other side of the dam wall a new and very substantial pontoon. The beach was literally no more than 10 square metres in size. Knowing that you can’t run motor powered craft on the lake, I wonder why a pontoon and the world’s smallest beach – that just had me intrigued.

Later at home I couldn’t get the ‘world’s smallest beach’ out of my head so I started a Google search to find out more. Turns out the council recently built the beach and pontoon so that people enjoying a paddle on Sunshine Cove’s Lake could get over the dam wall at low tide. When the tide is too low to traverse the wall, and you’re on the lakeside, you pull up your canoe/kayak onto the beach and carry it a few metres down the pathway to the pontoon and off you go again. And vice versa if you’re heading the other way. Which got me thinking on how connected the lake is to Cornmeal Creek and the Maroochy River. A little more tapping on the keyboard and I discovered a wealth of information on the Sunshine Coast Council website. We have a designated Canoe Trail on the Maroochy River.

There’s a link below to the page, but basically it has all the information you could ever need and links to more information about weather and tide times etc. Really very interesting. And it got more so once I downloaded a PDF of the Maroochy River Trail infographic map. It’s a bit hidden on the Trail Maps page, as it’s a text link just above the Google maps – so stay focused as it’s easy to miss. The map breaks down the whole trail into sections that are colour coded and tagged with a distance and a rough time for completion. All the access points are noted and there’s also a fair few images showing what you can expect to discover along the way – absolutely brilliant.

So I now have my motivation and really can’t wait to have a crack at a couple of the trail sections, could be a good way to get a little fitter. Maybe there’s a challenge in completing them all! Time will tell.

Visit the Sunshine Coast Council website for more information about the Maroochy River Trail.