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Published: December 15th 2006
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Today we set off early from Brisbane for our delayed 2 day trip to Moreton Island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Island
We were picked up at 7.30 in a good old Toyota Land Cruiser, and were part of a group of 10 spending 2 days on the Island.
We have chosen to come to Moreton rather than Fraser Island due to it's proximity to Brisbane. We couldn't be bothered with a 4 hour trip up the coast and our gut feel was that Moreton might be more interesting anyway - less emphasis on the rainforest part of the island and more on the activities.
Moreton is second only to Fraser in terms of being the worlds largest sand island. Everything is sand - literally! It therefore gets everywhere!
There is only 1 ferry a day serving the island - and it goes out at 9.00 and comes back at 3.30! One of the main attractions for us on the island, and hence why we had shopped around for the right tour company, was the opportunity to snorkel the Tangalooma Wrecks. The TW are 15 old mining boats sunk on the Beach at Tangalooma - the drop off point for the
Ferry. Due to strong currents, rips and public liability issues nearly all of the tour companies no longer offer snorkelling around said wrecks. Boring sods.
The wrecks look absolutely brilliant from the Ferry, and we will get to snorkel them tomorrow. The only slightly nervy sight was the fact that the water in the channel during the crossing was awash with thousands of jelly fish! As we've already mentioned on this trip - there are quite a few varieties out here which can do you some serious damage - and a couple that will kill you very easily!
There are absolutely no roads on Moreton, no power lines, no running water or drains etc. About 70 people live on it permanently. It is a complete national park. We headed to our camp and Clare became increasingly nervous about the likelihood of Spider encounters. There are a few bad assed spiders and snakes on the Island and as we are camping it's very likely we'll see them.
Our Camp site is 200m in from the beach, and we immediately see Spiders upon arrival! I start prodding them with sticks whilst Clare hovers in orbit some 42,000ft above Brisbane.
After dropping off some of our gear - doing lengthy bug and spider hunts in our tents to make them girl safe, we headed off through the island. We drove down through the middle of the island and came out half way in at a wonderful site called the Desert. It is a large clearing where we spent an hour or so Sand Tobogganing. Basically this involves walking up an extremely steep sand dune in the baking midday heat, laying down on a 2mm thick plank of MDF and then sliding down at high speed face forward. It is exhilirating, scary and pretty fast! The fact that it was so steep, and so hot meant we only climbed back up twice!
After the sand tobboganing we were plastered with sand - funny that eh? - mainly due to the amount of sun screen that we had used as a rather effective sandblasting undercoat. We therefore headed on through the island to the main west side beach. On the way our 4x4 got bogged, and we had to get out, dig out some of the sand and all the lads push like hell to get it moving. We eventually
got to the beach 20 mins later - we'd only driven 5km! The West beach on Moreton is absolutely stunning, miles and miles of totally desolate yet beautiful white sands, with surf rolling in from the Pacific. We all got out and had a wicked swim in the Ocean - the surf was good enough to dive into and ride back for a few metres without boogie Boards or surf boards.
Totally refreshed we drove up to the Northern tip of the Island and climbed up to the Cape Moreton Light House and old ranger station for beautiful panoramic views of the island and the Ocean.
Eventually at nearly 3pm we stopped on North Point Cove for a brilliant picnic from the back of the 4x4 - the food always tastes great when you are starving and somewhere so incredibly picturesque!
After an amazing swim round the headland and climb in all the rock pools and tidal pools we drove on round the beach. Other than the Middle Road through the island the only real means of navigation is to drive round the island on the beaches! The tide was quickly coming in though - and as
the extra person sitting in the front riding shotgun I ended up being the one jumping out on several occasions to see how deep a particular channel of water was or if the vehicle would sink. I assume someone would have pulled me out had I actually sunk.
Dinner was a Green Thai Curry in the campsite, before heading down to the beach late at night to sit and drink beer under the clearest starry sky I've ever seen. We were laid on our backs for ages, waves lapping up behind us, beer's going down easily, and shooting stars racing overhead regularly. No light pollution whatsover over the Pacific. It was very cool.
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