What to do at Moreton Island

There are countless ways to play in South East Queensland’s favourite sandpit. Here’s the best activities for your vacation.

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The best tip I can give you is to hold it like an ice cream. A scaly, spiky, slimy, fishy ice cream.

Then, floodlit waves lapping at your knees, it’s time to serve sashimi.

Feeding the wild dolphins is the highlight of any stay — or even day trip — at Tangalooma Island Resort, but it’s just a taste of the adventure awaiting in our ocean backyard.

Moreton Island, the third largest sand island in the world and only a 75-minute catamaran cruise from Brisbane, is the ultimate summer playground.

While it’s pipped at the sandy square metre post by nearby Fraser and Stradbroke islands, it offers an array of ways to appreciate its natural assets.

See it from the back of a quad bike as you tear through the trails, careening through ditches and dodging branches.

See it from below through a filter of fish as you snorkel Moreton’s eponymous wrecks.

Or see it from above with borrowed wings on a parasailing joyride.

The perspective parasailing at Moreton Island is hard to beat. Photo: Mark Higgins

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Coming back down to earth, there’s an almost inexhaustible supply of free or well-priced activities within the resort’s bounds, but the Southern Safari Tour explores further afield.

There are no traffic jams on the expansive eastern beach, where the tour bus streams down a sand highway with waves whooshing in the left lane and the occasional aerial overtake from a pair of sea eagles.

With a seasoned guide at the wheel, there are no worries about getting bogged.

Stopping to refuel with coffee and pastry, the tour takes in the WWII Rous Battery site before travellers are invited to soak their sand-seared soles in Mirapool Lagoon.

Cut off from the ocean by a slender sandbar, the pool is absolutely alive with fish.

The guide relies on the lure of lunch at an island icon to extract guests from their warm-water wallow.

The laid-back Gutter Bar in Kooringal doesn’t stand on ceremony — or walls.

It is, however, pretty serious about cold beer and good food. Tuck into a bucket of prawns sourced directly from local trawlers, complete with pink cocktail umbrella.

Big and Little Sandhills (Moreton Island is also home to the highest coastal sand dune in the world, Mount Tempest) are among the stops on the homeward journey.

Getting back down Moreton’s sand hills is much more fun than getting up.

While you should avoid scaling the big one after leg day at the gym, the panorama of drifting sand and turquoise water that awaits at the top is worth the pain.

It’s almost time for an early dinner when the tour arrives back at the resort and it can be anything from a beach barbecue to an Asian banquet.

But an ice cream on the sunset-angled jetty — for you or a finned friend — is still the best way to bookend long, sun-soaked days.

Help give the dolphins their dinner at Tangalooma Island Resort.

IF YOU GO

Tangalooma Island Resort offers a regular passenger ferry service from Holt Street Wharf in Brisbane. There’s parking on-site that you can book at the same time as your accommodation. If you’re planning on taking your 4WD over, the Micat ferry operates on a demand-based timetable. Reserve your spot well in advance if you’re travelling during school holidays.