The Glass House Mountains- 26th Sept.

I planned to hire a car and drive the hour or so from Noosa slightly inland and South to see the Glass House Mountains. Due to my late/ lack of planning I ended up with an automatic and a quick lesson in how to drive it which added to the intrinsic excitement of a rental car, a large excess and an unfamiliar route! Attempting to restrain my left foot I drove first to Eumundi a place that has some of the biggest and best markets in Australia (I'm told). After a pleasant wander round there and a few purchases I pressed on to the mountains.

The Glass House mountains are 9 isolated peaks of different shapes which jut out from a plain. They were named by Captain Cook who was reminded of Glass furnaces back home in Yorkshire but this is a rather obscure reference now. In the Aboriginal story they are the petrified forms of a family fleeing from the rising tide. They're formed from volcanic plugs left when everything else has eroded away.

I climbed Ngungun which was impressively steep had lunch and after a stop at a lookout continued onto Beerburrum and climbed that too, by then my legs had had their workout, I'd seen some nice views and it was time to head back.