WALKING ON SUNSHINE

An hour’s drive north of Brisbane, Queensland’s Sunshine Coast spans 60km from Caloundra to Noosa. Once a subtropical swamp and tea-tree wilderness, this string of coastal towns is now Queensland’s third most populous region and one of the fastest-growing in the country.

But in the hinterland behind Peregian Beach, just south of Noosa, you’d never know it. Though the bush around Peregian is threaded with new housing estates, a shopping centre and a golf course around the vast waterway of Lake Weyba, Mark (aka ‘Puff’) Dragan and partner Alexi Cox’s nine acres of heaven are at once