We took a day trip from Brisbane for some sandboarding, kayaking, and snorkeling on one of the world's largest sand islands, Moreton Island.As if Australia didn't have a ton of the world's best and biggest things, they can add largest sand islands to that list as well. Fraser Island, which happens to be the biggest, is a little farther north from the Gold Coast so we decided to book a day trip to Moreton Island. Moreton is the third largest sand island and 95% of it has been deemed a national park. Moreton Island is an 80 minute ride on the Micat ferry from Brisbane. We arrived right next to the Tangalooma wrecks and saw light yellow sand and crystal clear water! We booked our tour through Viator, which happens to be TripAdvisor's tour company. We've had really great luck with their tours and just like TripAdvisor, everything is user reviewed. It's a great resource! Anyway, the day trip included a bus ride from Brisbane to the ferry dock (about 20 minutes), the ferry ride to and from Moreton, transportation around the island, sandboarding, kayaking, snorkeling instructors, and lunch, which was a fantastic spread of food and drinks! Once we were on the island, we got split into two groups, one group did the water activities and the other did the sand dunes, then after lunch we switched. We volunteered to do the sand dune first (I didn't want to do sandboarding wet) so we hopped into their ATV bus and took the winding and incredibly bumpy ride up to the top of the dunes. Because the island is a national park, it's protected so no building or development can really take place there. I'm using the word "road" rather loosely here. Chase got stuck in the back of the bus and suffered a horrible headache because of the dips along the way. Once we parked, we were handed a piece of plywood and started our trek from the bus parking area to the dune we were going to belly surf down. It was roughly half a mile. Our tour guide picked a spot along the dune and told us that we could go down as many times as we wanted as long as we could hike back up. We got into position, our guide waxed up the bottom of the board and we were off. Below is a little slideshow from our GoPro footage, we'll let it speak for itself. So fun!! We each went twice and then we headed back to the bus to go to the beach for lunch. As our bus hit the shore, we saw a humpback whale, just of the coast, jump out of the water! We actually saw several on the ferry coming in to Moreton but that spotting was by far the closest to land. Below is one of the pictures we got on the way in. Can you spot the tail?? After lunch, we geared up and headed out to snorkel through the Tangalooma wrecks. 15 vessels were sunk on purpose back in the 60's to create a wave break. Now, the ships have coral and schools of fish dwelling there. One of our tour guides told us that the week before we went there were two baby humpback whales swimming between the wreckage! We didn't have such luck but snorkeling through the wrecks was really awesome. We also saw a carpet shark right at the end of ship row. We swam with the current and after reaching the last ship, we headed back to shore. The last thing we did was hop into the clear kayaks and paddle through the same wreckage we had just swam through. The clear kayaks were so cool. To be able to look down and see coral and fish under your boat was a unique experience! Moreton Island was a complete blast! The whole experience was worth spending a day away from Brisbane. Especially, since we witnessed a few more whales jumping out of the water on the way home. We were able to snap a picture with a flipper and a tail! From a distance but still! Until Next Time,
C + D
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