Rainbow Beach

Rainbow Beach is a coastal town in the Gympie Region of Queensland, Australia, located on the Cooloola Coast adjacent to Great Sandy National Park. It is renowned for its rainbow-coloured sand cliffs, the expansive Carlo Sand Blow, and as the southern gateway to K'gari (Fraser Island) via Inskip Point. The beach offers patrolled swimming, surfing and four-wheel driving, with views to Double Island Point and access to national park walking tracks.

Visitors can expect a wide ocean beach with golden and multi-coloured sand cliffs, backed by the Carlo Sand Blow dune system and Great Sandy National Park. The town has a patrolled surf beach, cafes and shops along Rainbow Beach Road, and a foreshore with picnic areas. Activities centre on beach walking, swimming between flags, surfing at Double Island Point, 4WD driving on the beach, hiking to Carlo Sand Blow lookout, and barge departures to K'gari from Inskip Point.

The town is named after the steamer Rainbow, wrecked on the beach in 1881. The area developed as a timber and sand-mining settlement before becoming a seaside holiday town and gateway to the Cooloola section of Great Sandy National Park. The coloured sands have long been a landmark for coastal navigation.

The area is part of the traditional lands of the Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi) people. A Dreaming story attributes the coloured sands to the spirit Yiningie, whose colours were impressed into the cliffs. The beach and Carlo Sand Blow remain culturally significant landscape features.