We spent a long weekend camping on Moreton Island and it was also the one year anniversary for the D4. Couldn't think of a better way to celebrate that. Moreton is easily accessible from Brisbane. It's a 90min barge trip from Port of Brisbane that costs around $270 for the return ticket. The barges were heavily booked, being a long weekend, so we could only get the 1pm Sat over and 8:30pm Mon home.
You can see the wrecks in the photo, beside which is the barge landing. Tangalooma Resort is 2km south of this point to the right. Barge exit and entry to & from the beach is straightforward, with relatively hard sand regardless of tide. I let the tyres down to 18psi while on the barge and never had an issue all weekend. And there is an excellent air compressor on board for the return journey. There is a number of good campsites to the north on this western side of the island, which is the calm water side. These tend to be more popular with families and boaties coming across from Brisbane. We prefer the eastern beach campsites and had booked at Blue Lagoon. Middle Road, as the imaginative name suggests, takes you across to the other side and is a nice drive through gum tree and banksia forest. Except for the sections with major wombat holes caused by numptys who leave their vehicles in 2WD. Here's the eastern beach, nice wide expanse that is drivable even at high tide.
We chose this site in the Blue Lagoon section. It's nestled back behind two dunes, so close to the beach but well sheltered.
There was at least three other sites in this section available the whole weekend. And we also checked out the Middle Road South section and found a couple of even better campsites, like these ones:
Again, plenty of top class sites available all the long weekend. Blue Lagoon is one of the sites with water (needs boiling), toilets and showers. But these are not obtrusive. Middle Road has no facilities but it's a relatively short drive 8km to Blue Lagoon. The trip was also the first test of the SupaPeg Awning. Excellent bit of kit.
For the Sunday we did a full loop of the northern section of the island. Here's the view looking south from the Cape Moreton lighthouse. Magic camp sites as far as the eye can see.
Just over the hill from Cape Moreton is North Point, another imaginative name. It's a magic spot.
The camping area at North Point is a large open expanse of grass that is quite popular with families and large groups. It's nicely located close to the sheltered beach of North Point and has good facilities. From there we drove the inland track to the little settlement of Bulwer on the north eastern side via the Five Hills Lookout. There's a few houses and a shop/cafe at Bulwer, which has a nice beach vibe and there's a couple of good camping areas around here too. From Bulwer, we drove south along the beach and bypass tracks back to the barge landing. Then decided to have a look at Tangalooma Resort. Well it was heaving with people and we couldn't get out of there fast enough. But handy if you need supplies or don't want to camp. Not calm and peaceful though. As an antidote, here's the beautiful little creek just outside our campsite.
We had a full day on Monday until the last barge so decide to have a look down south and then hang out at North Point again for the afternoon. Nice leisurely breakfast first.
The beach at the south end is softer so kept the D4 in low range. Nothing was a struggle but you just need to keep your wits about you with drop offs and beach entry/exit. The scenery is quite different to the north.
The little community of Kooringal is right at the southern tip and is all private houses with a few rental opportunities. And there's one shop and bar. It also seems to be Land Rover Central. We actually rented a place here in the 90's when I still had the old Range Rover.
The other memorable Land Rover moment was traversing the Tangalooma Bypass track. Came across a D4 closely followed by a D3 and D4 travelling together. Cool. Also spoke to a guy on the barge home in a 2005 V8 D3 HSE. He's done about 275k km and only recently changed the transmission oil for the first time (with steel pan conversion). This was welcome relief from the general dominance of crappy utes and Landcruisers. So then back up to North Point to give the awning and rear shade a good workout.
We were just having a little swim when we saw a couple of whales heading south and breaching. Ran up on to the point and watched them for about 15 minutes. Sadly you can't photograph whales with an iPhone.
Made our way back to the beach for around 5pm and headed down to Middle Road and back across to wait for the barge. The light was spectacular.
Would not have experienced this evening and sunset if we'd caught an earlier barge home. Amazing end to the weekend.
Moreton Island is a great place. It's got many of the same features as Fraser Island but much smaller and more accessible from Brisbane. No doubt Fraser is better in terms of amazing sights but Moreton is very much worth considering, especially as a lead up to the big one. Moreton probably wins for the pure beach camping experience if you exclude other sightseeing etc. from the comparison. So if you live in Brisbane and own a 4WD, you really should go. We won't leave it so long between trips next time.
This photo comparison is 17 years apart on the same beach. Chair legs didn't seem to stand up too well. It was actually remembering those good times that helped convince us to get the D4.
