Mum and dad at Hells Gates, with Alexandria Bay in the background

The tourist information centre staff were helpful and provided us with a good map (always an essential for a map fanatic like myself!) and we set off on what was to be a walk along the coastal edge of the national park. We walked past the beautiful Noosa Beach, and the sea looked so inviting! The walk was great, a boardwalk took us along the edge of the beach and then we followed a path along delightfully named places such as Witches Couldron (Boiling Pot), Tea Tree Bay, Dolphin Point, Winch Cove, Fairy Pools and culminating in Hells Gates!! We failed to see any witches or dolphins and particularly sadly there were no fairies in the pools. We could, however, see where Hells Gates got the name. This was the furthest point of Noosa Heads and it consisted of a long narrow cove in the steep cliffs into which the sea was crashing into at quite a force. It wasn’t somewhere you would want to dip your toes into that is for sure.