Noosa Head from Service Road
Access verdict · Lawful, nothing to flag · weakest evidence in the chain: official spatial record
A lawful approach from Service Road.
The chain below runs entirely across land the public has an established right to be on. It is a legal line, not a path: nothing here has been surveyed on the ground.
On-ground signage and temporary closures override this page. Always.
Getting to the start The trailhead coordinate, not the feature
The start is at -26.38109, 153.09961
That is Service Road, where the walk below begins — 2.4 km of it. Every link here goes to that coordinate and never to the feature itself, because a driving route to a waterfall is a driving route into the country above one.
- Google Maps one link for a desktop browser, Android or iPhone
- Apple Maps the default on iPhone and Mac
- Your own map app hands the coordinate to an installed app, offline ones included
-26.38109, 153.09961
The record does not say what reaches the start The roads layer leaves trafficability unstated on most of its rows, and it is unstated here. That is an absence of evidence, not an ordinary road: treat the last stretch as unresearched.
The coordinate is where the recorded way begins, read off the same layers as the walk. What the record says about a vehicle is above, and it describes this point rather than the drive to it. Whether the road is sealed, gated, or open today, and where a car may lawfully be left, are none of them things these records say — so treat the last few kilometres as unresearched, and the mapping service's route to them as its own work, not ours.
The chain, leg by leg Computed from cadastral geometry; never walked
| # | Runs along | Parcel / reference | Mapped along it | Distance | Bearing | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Track | Noosa Hill Walk | nothing mapped | 29.4 m | 303.4° WNW | Official spatial — evidence class |
| 2 | Track | Coastal Walk | nothing mapped | 2418.1 m | 79.5° E | Official spatial — evidence class |
| Total | no way mapped | 2447.5 m | Chain confidence Official spatial — evidence class | |||
Every leg above is computed from cadastral geometry. Nobody has walked it, and no part of it is a path on the ground: it is the line along which the public record establishes a right to be. Where a leg names a way, that is what a managing authority has mapped down the same ground — it says nothing more about your right to be there, which the parcel already settled.
Following it on the ground Every step ends at something you can check
at least 1 hour out and back
at least half an hour there at least half an hour back
30 m up and 15 m down on the way out — so the return leg climbs 15 m.
Walking only — nothing is counted for rest, water, photographs, navigation, or the state of the track.
The way passes this place Official spatial — evidence class
Noosa Hill Walk passes 26 m from the recorded point. There is 20 m of climb or drop between the two, read at a 5.0 m contour interval. The contours give the height between them and never which way round it is, so this is a separation and not a descent to plan.
The way comes close enough to be a way to this place without the record establishing that it ends at it. A register gives a feature one coordinate and a feature is not a point, so the two measurements above are the whole of the claim: how far off the way passes, and what height separates the two. Nothing here says the last of that gap can be crossed. The walk below runs along the surveyed way and ends on it. Leaving it to close the rest of the gap is not something any record here describes, and this page does not suggest it.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 169 m, setting off NNE (34°), to the junction with another published way.
Back: 214° along Noosa Hill Walk, 169 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 426 m, setting off E (84°), to the junction with Tea Tree Bay beach access 1.
Back: 264° along Noosa Hill Walk, 594 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 129 m, setting off E (96°), to the junction with Tea Tree Bay beach access 4.
Back: 276° along Noosa Hill Walk, 724 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 96 m, setting off ENE (70°), to the junction with Service Road.
Back: 250° along Noosa Hill Walk, 820 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 99 m, setting off ENE (58°), to the junction with another published way.
Back: 238° along Noosa Hill Walk, 919 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 302 m, setting off NE (48°), to the junction with Dolphin Point/Granite Bay Emergency Access.
Back: 228° along Noosa Hill Walk, 1221 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 144 m, setting off SE (135°), to the junction with Granite Bay beach access.
Back: 315° along Noosa Hill Walk, 1365 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 286 m, setting off ESE (114°), to the junction with Granite Bay beach access.
Back: 294° along Noosa Hill Walk, 1651 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 115 m, setting off E (79°), to the junction with Winch Cove beach access.
Back: 259° along Noosa Hill Walk, 1766 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 265 m, setting off NE (42°), to the junction with Picnic Cove beach access.
Back: 222° along Noosa Hill Walk, 2031 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 252 m, setting off ENE (60°), to the 20 m contour.
Back: 240° along Noosa Hill Walk, 2284 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 152 m, setting off SE (126°), to the 25 m contour.
Back: 306° along Noosa Hill Walk, 2436 m from the start.
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Follow Noosa Hill Walk for 12 m, setting off SSE (149°), to arrive.
Back: 329° along Noosa Hill Walk, 2448 m from the start.
2448 m in total, along the way the managing authority publishes. Every step above ends at something the records let you check on the ground. Bearings are true, not magnetic: they match a phone compass with no conversion. In this part of Queensland a magnetic bezel reads about 11° east of them, so an analogue compass needs that taken off before you set it.
What each step ends at, and why Official spatial — evidence class
- junction
- A junction with another published way. Unmissable on the ground, and the place a wrong turn happens.
- contour
- A mapped height. Checkable on a phone, and nothing else on the ground marks it.
- destination
- The place itself, which is always where the last step ends.
A cadastral parcel boundary is never one of them. It is invisible on the ground, so a step that ended at one could never be checked — however convenient it looks in the data.
How much climbing Read off the published contour layer
- Total climb
- 30.0 m
- Total descent
- 15.0 m
- Steepest sustained
- 12.8% over 78.0 m
- Contour interval
- 5.0 m
Every height the contours record along this route
| Distance along | Height |
|---|---|
| 7.2 m | 10.0 m |
| 124.3 m | 10.0 m |
| 257.9 m | 15.0 m |
| 315.3 m | 20.0 m |
| 427.2 m | 20.0 m |
| 510.9 m | 15.0 m |
| 588.8 m | 10.0 m |
| 991.5 m | 10.0 m |
| 995.1 m | 10.0 m |
| 1000.3 m | 10.0 m |
| 1043.0 m | 15.0 m |
| 1078.4 m | 20.0 m |
| 1253.0 m | 20.0 m |
| 1253.3 m | 20.0 m |
| 1265.6 m | 20.0 m |
| 1890.6 m | 15.0 m |
| 1899.4 m | 15.0 m |
| 2283.7 m | 20.0 m |
| 2436.0 m | 25.0 m |
| 2436.8 m | 25.0 m |
| 2437.5 m | 25.0 m |
| 2438.2 m | 25.0 m |
| 2439.2 m | 25.0 m |
The profile is the height the contour layer already records, read along the same line the legs above describe. It is not a survey of a path: nothing here says the ground between two contours is even, and a layer of 5.0 m contours cannot evidence a step smaller than the gap between them.
The line on the ground
Map
Route map: 2 legs from Service Road, 2447.5 m in total.
What the colours mean
- Land — the council area the region is published under
- Water beyond the council boundary
- Freehold or leasehold — no public access
- National park / protected estate — public land
- Road reserve
- Watercourse
- Track recorded by the managing authority
- Contour, every 10 m of height — nothing is implied about the ground between two of them
- Tenure unresolved — treated as no access
- Where your device says you are, shown only if you press the locate button — read as a rough fix, not a position, and never sent anywhere
- A place with a published approach — the pin is a link to it
- A place with none — every one is listed under the map with its verdict in words
- Where a published approach starts — each one has a page of its own below
- The walk — the line the legs below describe, not a surveyed path
- The parcels it crosses — the evidence the walk is lawful
- Watercourse crossing — no structure, off in high flow
Names on the map come from the same official records as the rest of the page — road and track names from the cadastre and the access layer, watercourses and estates from their own layers. A feature the record does not name is left unlabelled rather than guessed at.
Sources, licences and dataset versions for everything this map draws.
Every figure the map would draw — parcel references, distances, bearings and the crossing gap — is written out in full on this page, so nothing is only visible on the map. If the map does not load, nothing has been lost.
What this verdict rests on Grades compose to the weakest link
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The destination sits on Noosa National Park Official spatial — evidence class
Parcel 147NPW889, recorded tenure "National Park". Being at the destination and reaching it are separate questions, and this page answers only the second.
Cadastre and protected-area estate layers Attribution licensed
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Leg 1: Noosa Hill Walk carries a right of passage Official spatial — evidence class
29.4 m at 303.4°. A track recorded by the managing authority in its published access layer, at the vetting status that layer states.
Leg reference Noosa Hill Walk Grade official_spatial
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Leg 2: Coastal Walk carries a right of passage Official spatial — evidence class
2418.1 m at 79.5°. A track recorded by the managing authority in its published access layer, at the vetting status that layer states.
Leg reference Coastal Walk Grade official_spatial
If something goes wrong
Emergency reference — read this to 000
- Location
- Noosa Head, Noosa National Park
- Lot on plan
- 147NPW889
- Coordinates
- -26.37778, 153.11778 (WGS84 / GDA2020)
- Feature
- cape
What this approach was read from
- Cadastral data Queensland (DCDB), incl. easement layer — © State of Queensland (Department of Resources) CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22
- Queensland LiDAR-derived contours (5 m) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22
- Queensland local government area boundaries — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-27
- Queensland place names gazetteer — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-16
- QPWS access (walking tracks, roads, facilities) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-23
- Queensland roads and tracks (named road centrelines) — © State of Queensland CC-BY-4.0 · snapshot 2026-08-22