Moreton Island

During our time in Australia, we went for the rustic, good old camping at Moreton Island. We joined the Blue Planet Tour for a two days one night Moreton Action Safari.

As Moreton Island has no concrete road, only 4WD cars are allowed on this island. At 7am, we waited at the Brisbane City train station to be picked up by the four wheel drive. Each 4WD could take up to 8 passengers.

We headed for the ferry terminal and took the miCat for the one hour ride to Moreton Island. Upon reaching the island, the ferry embarked directly on the beach. We sat in our 4WD and began our fun; being transported from the ferry directly onto the beach.

The beach on this part of the island was calm.

Our first stop was our camp site. As Blue Planet Tour organised regular trips, it had its own permanent camp site where tents were already set up. We chose the cleanest and driest tent and after that headed to the beer shop to get our drinks for the evening.

Right after our cold chicken sandwich lunch, we went to the only resort on the island for a snokelling trip. Wet suits, masks, snokels and fins were provided and we snokelled around the wrecks. We spotted some colorful fishes and lovely corals though I must admit that this was no Great Barrier Reef.

We drove around the island and as it had rained the day before, Melissa, our guide, could not stop commenting that the drive was smooth as the sand was compact and the 4WD did not bump too much.

We reached our next destination. The sand desert. Moreton Island is the third largest sand island. Her eldest sisters are Fraser Island and Stradbroke Island who are just nearby.

We tried out sand tobogganing and it was really not as easy as it looked. I tried once and ate sand. For the next 3 days, when I scratched my head, I found sand particles between my finger nails.

We used a plank and we rubbed wax from candle on one side to make it smoother and faster. After that we lied flat on the plank and held up the front of the plank with our hands. We had to lift up our elbows as high as possible in order to protect our face from the sand.

Tim and Seb tried out a few times. And once Tim even went really really far. Do you see the tiny speck in the left image? That was our Singapore Rocket Tim.

When we went down, we obviously had to come up. The climbing up part deterred most of us from going down.

It was really tiring to walk up the sand hill. Still, we had much fun at this desert.















For the rest of the evening, we went for a swim in the sea, tried to watch the sunset (but there were too many flies at the beach), had a good BBQ dinner and drank and chatted around the campfire.

The oldest couple was from England. The man was a retired fireman and it was cool to have them with us. There were many young people. A few from Germany, a few from Korea and the others from the rest of the world.

The next day, we visited the other side of the island where the waves were big and strong. We visited the oldest lighthouse in Queensland. We had lunch along the 33km long beach. We swam in the sea. We watched surfers surfing in the waves. We went inland and swam in the Blue Lagoon where the fresh water was supposed to be 7 times purer than Brisbane water.

Soon, it was time to leave this natural, undistubed island. Moreton Island, you will be missed.