Queensland’s ‘least likely paradise’ is not your standard resort island

A hundred years ago, the first tourists on Bribie Island arrived from Brisbane on a 1000-passenger luxury steam ship complete with an orchestra that played as they danced after a three-course lunch. Now they’re as likely to arrive by hotted-up car, and head straight for McDonald’s or Hungry Jack’s, which were until more recently, two of the island’s better dinner options.

Bribie Island, Queensland’s “least-likely island paradise”.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland

Bribie Island was Queensland’s first holiday island destination. There’s a bridge to it now, so it’s Queensland’s most accessible island destination too. And at barely 45 minutes’ drive from Brisbane Airport, it’s dead easy to get to for those down south looking for a Queensland beach getaway that’s still uncrowded. But who’s even heard of Bribie Island? Even Brisbane locals know it mostly as “God’s waiting room” after aggressive marketing campaigns by the brains behind the plethora of over 55s housing estates that opened here throughout the 1980s.

I’ve arrived onto the island from Brisbane Airport by way of a two-lane highway bridge. My apartment is located on the same main road, in a suburb called Bellara. I’m parked outside a vape store. The outlook from my second-floor, three-bedroom apartment is across water, as promised. Pumicestone Passage, which divides this island from the rest of Queensland, is blue and strikingly clear. But no one mentioned the Lifeline outlet in the foreground. I keep my doors open at night for a breeze, and it’s not the sea I hear: it’s the revved-up engines of the island’s youth, doing block work up and down Benabrow Avenue.

I change apartments next morning, shifting a suburb south to a neighbourhood on the water called Bongaree. It’s off the main drag, so I’m not part of the peak-hour route for commuters working in Brisbane. In Bongaree, locals walk their dogs – and their babies – along a paved walkway just beside and above the water. They’re shaded by big sprawling gum trees, which lend the place a feeling that we could be somewhere in the outback, though it’s the fig trees that impress me more – they must be a century old at least, sitting squat in green parks beside the water. There are yachts anchored off the shore, not far from beaches – long and wide with white sand – where kids swim.

In the distance, looking north, I make out the karst-like Glasshouse Mountains, rising at right angles from the ground west of the Sunshine Coast. It’d be dead quiet if it weren’t for birdsong: kookaburras compete with rosellas, magpies and seagulls. Locals throw fishing lines in the water from every possible casting point; conversations I overhear tend to centre on why the fish aren’t biting. A large pod of dolphins with babies comes in close, rounding up a school of whiting, making a mockery of their excuses. When I finally leave the coastline, reluctantly, it’s to order a latte at a cafe called Annie Lane, where locals dine alfresco on a tree-lined main street, asking me how I like their island. “I’m not sure yet,” I’d like to say.

Much of Bribie Island is only accessible by 4WD.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland

Local tourism operator Jason Brown had warned me before I arrived that Bribie Island “isn’t your standard Queensland resort island”. “It’s Queensland’s least-likely island paradise,” he said. “You’ve got to dig a little deeper than some places. That’s the best thing about it.”

There’s a gigantic Bunnings you won’t ever find on Hamilton Island, which I discover on my way around to the island’s south-east coast, on Moreton Bay. One of Australia’s largest urban estuaries, Moreton Bay has a reputation for mud flats and mangroves, but in reality it’s full of white-sand beaches only locals know about.

I walk around Buckley’s Hole Conservation Park, east of Bongaree, where there are empty walking trails out to vast expanses of white sand beaches, fringed by tea-tree-stained creeks and impressive homes. I resist the lure of Red Rooster as I drive eastward to Woorim Beach, Bribie Island’s most infamous tourist spot. A tragic shark attack in February put this beach suburb on the front pages of national newspapers, though there are plenty of people swimming off its pretty beach when I swing by. There’s tropical island charm here in bucketloads: cafes under fig trees serve breakfasts to chatty regulars. They call this a surf beach, though many a surfer might counter that, but I can see across to Moreton Island and the surf club beside it has a nice view over the (tiny) waves.

Kayaking on one of the island’s four lagoons.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland

But what lies just beyond Woorim Beach is Bribie Island’s real claim to (lack of) fame. More than a third of the island is made up of national park, accessible by 4WD vehicle only. I’m doing a tour instead with G’day Adventure Tours where, just as on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island), 200 kilometres or so north, a 23-kilometre-long strip of beach serves as Queensland highway. But where half a million people visit K’gari each year, very few come here.

Brown stops at a semi-tidal lagoon a short distance up the beach. We kayak across mirrored water as eastern grey kangaroos bound off into the bush. There are four lagoons like this to visit; at one, I wash down on my belly with a rushing tide, through crystal-clear water to the ocean. Further up the beach, almost to where the island ends at Caloundra, we visit gun emplacements where canons in the dunes formed the last defence of Brisbane during World War II. Loggerhead turtles use the beach too, to lay eggs from November to April. It’s a stunning four-hour tour, but Brown says it’s the first tour he’s done all week (it’s Thursday). “People don’t know about this place,” he says.

More than a third of the island is classified as national park.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland

Next morning I drive back across the bridge to the mainland and turn right alongside Pumicestone Passage to a spot even locals … on an island no one knows about … know nothing about. Bribie Beach Shack is claimed to be the only licensed bait and tackle shop on the planet; there’s a bar facing the water, serving fish caught this morning and ice-cold beer. It’s been running in some shape or form since 1951. I hire a tinnie and take off north, passing by a feeding dugong and pods of dolphins keen to ride my bow waves. There’s nothing but wilderness north, teeming with empty beaches where brumbies gather. The Glass House mountains loom beyond – some higher than half a kilometre up. Back at the bar, co-owner Rich Speck tells me he left global manager roles with companies such as Qantas to buy this place. “People ask me all the time, ‘What did you come here for?’ ” he says. “I just tell ’em: ‘Look at this place, what do you think?’ ”

There are plenty of places to eat between my adventures – all of them fancier than the local Macca’s – such as the Oyster Shed Beach Club, where I eat seafood and drink margaritas beneath palm trees looking across Pumicestone Passage, or The Jetty, on the other side of the passage, built on absolute beachfront, where chargrilled Moreton Bay bugs might’ve been just plucked from the water out front. Though, in truth, it’s the rustic local hangouts I prefer, and there are plenty of them – such as Pigface Seafood on the dunes at Woorim Beach, where it looks like I may be the only tourist here. There’s a subtle sort of island magic in this place, mixed in with a fair dose of contented Queensland suburbia – which sums up Bribie Island, I think.

DETAILS

FLY
Fly to Brisbane then hire a car. All major car-hire companies operate at Brisbane Airport.

STAY
Bribie Island Holiday Hub offers more than 100 holiday homes with concierge-style amenities from $180 a night, holiday-hub-bribie-island.netlify.app

PLAY
G’day Adventure Tours offer a four-hour beach tour, including kayaking, from $129, gdayadventuretours.com, Bribie Beach Shack offers hire boats from $110 for a half-day, bribiebeachshack.com.au, and Bribie Gondola offers a variety of tours along the island’s canal system from $75pp, bribieislandgondola.com.au

EAT
Oyster Shed Beach Club offers meals and cocktails right on the water, sandstonepointhotel.com.au/the-oyster-shed. Try Annie Lane’s all-day brunch in Bongaree, annielanecafe.com.au, or eat with the locals at Pigface Seafood, facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063481213043#

MORE
visitmoretonbayregion.com.au

The writer travelled courtesy of Visit Moreton Bay.