Our Seaplane Adventure

Seaplanes. I remember the first time I went on one, I was 15 and went to the Maldives with my friend and her family, no one mentioned a seaplane to me. In fact, I hadn’t even given it a second thought on how we would get to our island. But there it was in front of me, a tiny 12 seater plane bobbing up and down on the water, the pilot was wearing flit flops and an unbuttoned shirt. Fear set in.

I spent the majority of that trip cowering behind a chair whilst everyone around me oo’d and ahh’d at the views out of the window. ‘Dammit ‘I think to myself 12 years later, I wish I had looked out the window.

Now it’s 2018 I am much more big and brave… sort of. When Tripadvisor Attractions invited me to take a seaplane over the beautiful Queensland coastline, I jumped at the chance. ‘I can finally make up for not looking out the window all those years ago!’

With beaches like these, why would anyone say no?!

Booking with Tripadvisor was very simple and we could read all the reviews before we confirmed, so we knew we weren’t choosing a dodgy experience! On the morning of our flight we were texted by Shawn, the pilot and owner of Paradise Seaplanes, to confirm weather was all looking good and we were okay to fly! Woohoo! I then spent the rest of the morning convincing my friend it was all safe and she wasn’t about to fall to her death over the Pacific Ocean.

We took the 30 minute journey from Noosa down to the Maroochy River, took off our shoes and listened to the safety brief. We opted to have the doors off the plane, this is better if you want to take lots of photos, there is an option to have the doors on.

Shawn warned me it would be windy, he strapped me into my seat and warned me again ‘it’s going to be windy with the doors off!’. ‘Yeah yeah’ I thought, how windy can windy be? Okay it was pretty windy, and by pretty windy I mean my fake eyelashes flew off half way through the flight, but I didn’t regret having the doors off at all!

The plane takes off from the Maroochy River, no waiting around for other planes, this is the only one! The views are beautiful, you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, and take off is just as fun as the flight!

First you will be taken over the city and up the coast, you can see how the city snakes its way up the natural course of the beach, everyone looks very tiny from up here!

We then headed back towards the river where we were met with the most breathtaking view over Mudjimba Beach, an unspoiled coastal haven.