Cooroy

Cooroy is a traditional country town with its prize winning streetscaping and community artwork is worth a visit with its urban village like atmosphere. Cooroy started as a camp for timber workers in 1863. The railway came to Cooroy in 1891 and soon after the main street started to develop. The town relied on the sawmills and local dairies and was a prosperous town until the collapse of the dairy and fruit growing industries in the the 1970's. Cooroy is now famous for Cooroy Water which flows from Cooroy Mountain and sold all over Australia.

At the end of Maple Street is the Cooroy Butter Factory (07 5442 5055) which hosts local and interstate art. The Cooroy Butter Factory opened in 1915 and closed in 1975. The Noosa Alpaca Shop and Information Centre (07 5442 5151) at 327 Dath Henderson Road has a collection of alpaca and number of alpaca products for sale, open 10 – 4. Cooroy Community Markets are held at the RSL Hall, Maple Street (07 5441 6386) every Thursday from 8am - 1pm and sell a range of goods. Cooroy has a good collection of restaurants.

Cooroy is about 15 minutes drive from Noosa and easily reached by bus. Cooroy has a rail station that connects with Brisbane and is an entry point for Noosa. Buses connect Noosa with Cooroy.

Click here for Cooroy Accommodation.

Work commenced in 1987 to create some magnificent botanic gardens on the site of a rubbish tip at Lake Macdonald. Around 80 per cent of the plants in the garden are native species and home to tortoises and 40 varieties of birds make for a very pleasant place to walk around. The gardens are located on Lake Macdonald Drive just before you reach Cooroy from Noosa. Ida Duncan who founded the gardens had a vision that a rubbish tip was not the correct use of land and she planted native trees all over the land. The gardens cover 20 acres and have an amphitheatre in the gardens used for concerts and weddings and other noosa events.