Moreton Bay's Islands: Brisbane's Backyard Wilderness

Moreton Bay, the large marine park that extends north and east of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, contains a cluster of islands that provide the coastal and nature escape that Brisbane residents and visitors seek within a short ferry or water taxi journey from the mainland. The combination of the large islands (Moreton, Stradbroke, and Russell) with their diverse natural environments and the smaller sand islands and cays that dot the bay creates a marine geography of extraordinary richness accessible from a major metropolitan area.

North Stradbroke Island, the world's second largest sand island, is the most visited of the bay's islands, its combination of beach surfing on the ocean side, calm swimming on the bay side, and the fresh water lakes in the island's interior providing the variety that makes "Straddie" one of Queensland's most beloved island destinations. The island's Aboriginal community, the Quandamooka people, maintains connection to Country that the island's tourism development has been managed to respect, with the permanent transfer of national park land to the Quandamooka in 2011 providing a landmark example of land rights recognition in a tourism-significant area.

Moreton Island, the third largest sand island in the world, provides a different character from Stradbroke, its more remote feeling and the deliberate limitation of development creating a wilderness experience that the more developed Stradbroke cannot offer. The Tangalooma resort, the island's sole significant tourist facility, provides the dolphin feeding experience that has made Moreton Island famous, but the island's character is more shaped by the shipwrecks on its western shore and the vast sand dunes of its interior than by any developed attraction.

The Moreton Bay Marine Park protects the bay's extraordinary marine ecosystem, including the dugong population that is one of the largest accessible from a capital city, the loggerhead turtle nesting beaches, and the migratory whale season that brings humpbacks through the bay during their annual migration. The marine park's management balances the recreation, fishing, and nature tourism interests that use the bay with the conservation requirements of the ecosystem that sustains those uses.

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