Look on a map.  There’s no such place as Noosa. 

Noosa Heads became a word association game for those who considered it a brand. Something to be sold, traded and leveraged. Noosa Springs, Noosa Waters, Noosaville, Noosa Outlook, Noosa Yoghurt.

The community and environment groups of Noosa have long believed it is not a brand to be commodified. It’s an idea of how we can live, plan and protect a community.  But getting heard over the noise of big money, big politics, vested interests and a fragmented media is not easy.  Noosa Matters is a way we can speak, and be heard.

If we continue to fight the battles of those great eco warriors of the past 60 years, can we protect what we have worked so hard for?  A place surrounded by national park; not gifts, but hard-won trophies, clawed back for our children to enjoy.  A place of villages where (most) of what we have built is no taller than the trees.  A place where business and tourism genuinely understand the long-term game; more, endlessly more, is not always better.  This social/business compact held for a while, but now it is fraying at the edges.

In recent years Noosa local government has been infiltrated with big party politics. Long term renters have been squeezed out by the stampede to Short Term Accommodation businesses in streets where people no longer know their neighbours. Property speculation has made owning a home – or even renting one – a distant dream for young people. The gap between the rich and Noosa’s working poor has become a chasm, dug deeper by a pandemic and by a ‘Let it rip’ mentality that leaves the vulnerable even more exposed.  Global warming puts much of Noosa directly in its path, while some stand on their waterfront balconies with their eyes closed and fingers in their ears.

The big business voices in Noosa hold sway.  Hastings Street shouts louder than Maple Street. Residents and community groups fight a slowly losing battle.

The carpetbaggers arrive, with deep pockets, even deeper political connections and megaphones for their view of how Noosa could be re-made better, relentlessly bigger.

But Noosa was once the crucible of Queensland’s environment battle, our state’s first biosphere, a place where ‘lifestyle’ was more than just a real estate agents’ spiel, and groups like Noosa Parks Association earned a state-wide reputation for getting hard things done.

These are things worth fighting for, and debates worth having.  This is the ‘why’ of Noosa Matters.

We hope that we can be part of the conversation about what Noosa means. That’s our idea, and our challenge.