Sand islands full of history

MELANIE Ball gets the bug for Queensland's historic Moreton Bay, home to unspoiled wilderness and an island once known as the "hellhole of the Pacific".

Abundant wildlife ... Moreton Bay is home to playful dolphins, turtles and dugongs.

MORETON Bay. The name makes me hungry for crustaceans tossed in garlic oil. Starts me singing, too:

And many a man from
downright starvation
Lies mouldering now
underneath the clay
And Captain Logan he
had us mangled
All at the triangles of
Moreton Bay.

(Anyone unfamiliar with this traditional ballad may be heartened to learn that Logan, the infamous commandant of Moreton Bay penal settlement from 1826, met a violent death.)

But Moreton Bay is more than convict deprivation and bugs on rocket.

Having snaked through the CBD, the Brisbane River spills into a shallow expanse of water where dugongs graze on seagrass and dolphins ride the bow waves of container ships, ferries and yachts.

Dotting the bay are islands to which migratory birds return each year to feed, and humans to fish, swim and get sand in everything.

Moreton and North Stradbroke, the largest islands, are a barrier between bay and ocean.

North Stradbroke (known as Straddie) is Brisbane's holiday island, accessible by water taxi or vehicular ferry.

Stradbroke's first regular European visitors were convicts who built the causeway beside Dunwich jetty. They also transferred supplies from ships to shallower-draught boats for transport up river to the penal colony.

But a dune south of Dunwich has yielded evidence of Aboriginal habitation 20,000 years before convicts landed on Minjerribah (Straddie's traditional name).

There are no sealed roads south of Dunwich, and inland tracks cross private sand-mining leases. Four-wheel-drives can explore east coast beaches but most visitors are content to stay on the bitumen.

From Dunwich, sealed roads run east to Blue Lake and north to Point Lookout, Queensland's easternmost point.

Three kilometres before my local bus reaches Point Lookout, coastal scrub gives way to houses and low-rise resorts festooned with beach towels. We pick up and drop off sandy youngsters and bleached surfers before stopping opposite several cafes.

A chain of beaches and bluffs created over countless tides, Point Lookout is best seen from North Gorge Headland Trail.

From just past the fish and chip shop, the trail follows the cliff line to a view 32km down Main Beach. Continuing around the headland, it cuts inland before looping onto another bluff with views of dolphins and turtles (and humpback whales from June to November).

At my walk's end, I bus back to Dunwich and do what everyone else awaiting the ferry is doing – eat an ice cream. Straddie is that kind of place.

So is Moreton, the world's second largest sand island after Fraser. Ninety-eight per cent of Moreton's scrub and dunes is national park.

Development is limited to Tangalooma Resort, site of Queensland's only whaling station (1953-62), and three hamlets.

Our barge lands us on the beach at Bulwer – several houses and a store (that sells ice creams).

After two hours on the barge and more in a 4WD, I realise that Moreton Island deserves leisurely exploration with snorkel, walking shoes, sand toboggan and fishing line over several days, all ending with gin and tonic.

Until then I enjoy my day tour, following roads through grass trees, scribbly gums and banksias to the ocean beach to leave footprints beside pied oystercatcher tracks.

After swimming in Blue Lagoon and lunching under whispering sheoaks, we set off to Cape Moreton and the lighthouse that crowns it. Built in 1857 of local sandstone, the tower still warns shipping.

Cape Moreton is a natural grandstand and the round eyes of half a dozen turtles surfacing in the wash below are huge in my binoculars.

I don't see any sharks, but octogenarian Darrell Cranch remembers when he used to see 60 dorsal fins following boats.

Cranch, the grandson of a St Helena Island prison superintendent, holidayed on the island as a boy, sailing toy boats made by prisoners and helping warders feed scraps to the sharks to deter would-be escapees.

Opened on May 14, 1867 to ease the overcrowding in Brisbane's jail, St Helena operated as a high-security prison, then as a prison farm, for 65 years.

In 1979, it became a national park, and the stockade ruins are open to guided groups.

The "Hellhole of the Pacific" and "Queensland's Inferno" were St Helena's early nicknames.

Inmates did hard labour, and rule infringements earned spirit-breaking isolation in underground cells. The tour's theatrical flogging is based on real punishments.

St Helena's remoteness made it self-sufficient over time, raising the living standards there above those in most contemporary penal establishments.

Inmates grew vegetables and sugar cane, and the volcanic pastures fed prize-winning Ayrshire dairy cattle.

They also nourished olive trees whose oil won prizes in Italy – oil that more fortunate people might have blended with garlic and drizzled over Moreton Bay bugs.

The Sunday Telegraph