Sunshine Coast a feast for the senses

Sunshine Coast

a feast for the senses

By Grantlee Kieza,

Industry Reporter

The Sunshine Coast is one of the 10 biggest cities in Australia and it’s growing fast.

Almost 400,000 people call it home and many more are fl ocking to the beaches, majestic hinterland and jobs that come with an expanding airport. It is one of the youngest cities in Australia too, and one of the most popular for Australian holidaymakers. The Coast’s famous produce and restaurants will be showcased across the region in The Curated (side) Plate from July 29 to August 7. Local restaurants, farms, tourism and event operators are combining to present 85 events with a rich menu of options across the ten days. There will be a vast array of wellpriced events from fi ne diners such as Harry’s on Buderim and Spicers Tamarind, to great local producers including Montville Coff ee and Sunshine Coast Cider.

Leading local chefs such as Matt Golinski, Alejandro Cancino and Stuart Bell will host interactive events.

The Sunshine Coast’s newly minted status as Australia’s ‘craft beer capital’ will be recognised with brewery tours, beer and food-matching masterclasses. Visit Sunshine Coast CEO Matt Stoeckel said good food and drink were strong motivators for travel, and The Curated (side) Plate was the perfect opportunity for visitors to explore the region, plate in hand. Good food has always been a feature of the Sunshine Coast.

The fi rst inhabitants of the district were the Aboriginal people of the Gubbi Gubbi language group who hunted and fi shed around the waterways and travelled overland to the Blackall Range to feast on bunya nuts and perform initiation ceremonies and corroborees.

On May 17, 1770, English botanist Joseph Banks, aboard Lieutenant James Cook’s H. M. Bark Endeavour, observed what became known as Pumicestone Passage and Cook noted the unusual mountains that resembled the “Glass Houses”, the furnaces used to make glass back home in Yorkshire. Almost 30 years later, another English sailor, Matt hew Flinders, climbed Beerburrum, one of those strange Glass House Mountains. The fi rst European to live in the area was the 21-year-old escaped convict James Davis, who in 1829, fl ed the harsh Moreton Bay penal sett lement which was under the command of the brutal Captain Patrick Logan. Davis was adopted by an Aboriginal group, whose leader believed the pasty Scot was his dead son resurrected as a white man. He became an honoured member of the tribe and travelled with them for hundreds of kilometres over the countryside. He maintained this new life for 13 years, learning diff erent indigenous languages and rituals so well that when he was found by a party of Europeans at Wide Bay in 1842, he had to relearn English and reacquaint himself with European clothing and customs. Davis worked as a blacksmith at Kangaroo Point before opening a profi table crockery shop in George Street in 1864. He died in 1889, leaving a small fortune to the Brisbane General Hospital.

By then Queensland had been a colony for 30 years and the Gympie gold rush had seen bullock teams working around the clock in the construction of the new Gympie Road that improved crossings over the Pine, Caboolture and Mooloolah Rivers. Cobb and Co coaches established a regular service, boasting that they could cover the BrisbaneGympie run in just two days. Robert Bulcock, the State Member for Enoggera, purchased 110 hectares in Caloundra and Thomas Ballinger built a slab hut by the beach. His land, known as Ballinger’s Hill, was fortifi ed during the Russian invasion scare of the 1880s and became known as Batt ery Hill. James Moff at, a chemist from Brisbane, built a cott age by the beach that now bears his name.

By 1934 the great tourism boom was underway around Maroochydore and Caloundra with the opening of the Great North Coast Road, later to be known as the Bruce Highway, aft er Henry Adam Bruce, the Queensland Minister for Public Works.

At the time the new holiday destination was called the “Near North Coast” but in November 1966 Maroochydore, Noosa and Landsborough Shires all voted to adopt the name “Sunshine Coast”. The name was offi cially gazett ed on July 22, 1967 and took eff ect from August 1.

Visit Sunshine Coast CEO Matt Stoeckel