Kin Kin Creek

The second longest waterway in the basin at 43.3 km, or 51.6 km if you include the East Branch. In practice, only the lower 6 km is likely to be navigable and this section takes you to the edge of the national park.

What to expect

The lower reaches are fairly deep and 65 m wide at the entrance to the lake where it meets the Noosa River at the head of Lake Cootharaba. It has a meandering nature low down and quickly becomes shallower with sandy sections separating deeper pools as you leave the reach of the lake. Big snags are possible after summer floods, but being a popular spot, most of those in the lower sections will have a path cut through fairly quickly. Not so much upstream.

A footbridge crosses the lower reaches linking the bushwalking trails between Elanda Point and Harry’s Hut Road. This is about 5 km from Lake Cootharaba. A canoe launch point is marked on the northern shores just before the footbridge This leads to the Boronia trail that will eventually reach Harrys Hut Road.

Once outside of the park it maintains a floral fringe, but the surrounding land has been extensively cleared. Low flows would make any navigation above the park boundaries difficult.

Kinaba Visitors Centre near the junction of Kin Kin Creek and Lake Cootharaba makes for an interesting waypoint on any trip.

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Logistics

No direct access to the creek so you will have to put-in at Elanda Point or Harrys Hut (high clearance 4WD).

Elanda Point is about 6 km from Kin Kin Creek and Harrys Hut is about 5 km taking the most direct route.

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Distances

Starting at Elanda Point and heading up Kin Kin Creek, you have:

^* Side represents either the left / port (L) or right / starboard (R) sides when facing downstream of the main river or the specified direction of travel for bays or lakes (usually anticlockwise).
^† Most of the features were taken from local council pages.
^§ Distances have been manually calculated from the river mouth.

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Map

Explore the key locations in the map below. Most locations will have a photograph after being visited that can be seen by clicking on the icon or number in the map itself.

The map also has markers every 100 metres that start at 0 from the boat ramp.

You may need to zoom in to see all of these markers. These do not correlate with any existing numbering system on the lake.

• Lake Cootharaba
• Kinaba Information Centre
• Kin Kin Creek
• Lake Como
• Boat Ramp
• Bridge
• Campsite
• Kayak Ramp or Paths
• River Campsite

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What to take

Ensure electronic devices and gear have waterproof containers / dry bags if needed.

^* Highly recommended (aka required)
^† You should wear clothing and footwear that you can comfortably swim in.
^‡ These are for self or assisted rescues as there are places that you can't easily swim back to the shore.

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Wildlife

Small forested creek lined with mangroves at the start with Melaleuca and Casuarina further up with taller eucalypt and rainforest behind these.

Wetland birds are more common lower down with more woodland species encountered as the creek narrows.

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