A Bushwalking Trip to Moreton Island

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Posted 2022-10-14 by Roz Glazebrook ⇒ follow

I've had three wonderful Easter trips to Moreton Island with my bushwalking club two years apart. I wrote about some of those trips here .

On the Easter trips, we stayed at a campsite near Blue Lagoon and did lots of day walks. We were very lucky on those trips to have Alan Gennings from Moreton Experience to drop us off in his four wheel drive bus and pick us up at different locations. In this way, I had been able to explore a lot of this beautiful wedge shaped sand island, which is 37 kilometres long, 10 kilometres wide, and located 40 kilometres from Brisbane.

On those previous visits, I had visited most of the main attractions of the island including the champagne pools, the Cape Moreton Lighthouse, the World War II Rous Battery, the Desert south of Tangalooma and the Big and Little Sandhills.

My most recent visit a few weeks ago was much harder, as we had to walk about 44 kilometres over three days with full packs and camp two nights at different campsites .

Six of us caught the Micat Ferry from Howard Smith Wharf over to the island where we started our walk. We planned to walk about eleven kilometres north up the Western Beach and camp at Comboyuro Point campground the first night.

This was supposed to be an easy day but because the tide was in, we had to plough through soft sand and cross a few creeks so it was a pretty tough walk. We were supposed to have great views of the Glass House Mountains but the misty weather prevented that.
We did have a nice break at Bulwer, where we went to Castaways café for lunch and picked up a bottle of wine for dinner.

It was only a short 1 kilometre walk from the café to the campground. There was the opportunity to have a cold shower there but only one of us was brave enough for that. We had a lovely night sitting on the beach watching the moonrise over the ocean. We all slept well.

After an early start the next day we set off for our second campsite at Eagers Creek. It was a 23 kilometre walk along Blue Lagoon Road and the Telegraph Track. On the was, we climbed 285m Mt Tempest, which is thought to be the highest stabilised sand dune in the world.

I had climbed it a couple of times before on other trips. Luckily we could leave our heavy packs at the base of the climb. It was drizzling on and off most of the day but we did manage to get some good views from the top of the mountain.

It was a beautiful walk through a variety of habitats with lots of spring wildflowers and birds. Some of us had ponchos and some rain jackets but I think we all got a bit wet. Luckily, I had worn my cheap Bunnings gaiters on this trip, which stopped me from getting sand in my socks and blisters, which I had got a few weeks before on a Fraser Island walk.

A couple of the others got bad blisters, sore toes and loose toenails on this walk, but my feet were fine One of our group was very surprised she got blisters as she had never had them before, even when she walked the whole 825 kilometres of the Camino where almost everyone else got them. Wet socks and sand walking while carrying a heavy pack is a killer on feet.

We crossed over the island onto the Eastern Beach and walked up to the campsite behind the sand dunes. There was a toilet and tap a short walk away, although we needed to treat the water. It was lovely going to sleep listening to the sound of the sea. It was one of the women's first through walk for many years. She had bought a new lightweight tarp, which we all appreciated as we were able to cook and eat under shelter as it was raining both nights.

On our last day, we were up and packed and ready to leave by 7am thinking it was going to take a long time to walk 10 kilometres back across the Island on Middle Road to get to the 12 midday Ferry near the Wrecks on Western Beach on time.

We were very happy to find the track was a lot easier than we were expecting. We thought it was going to be all loose dirt and sand, but the rain and cars had compacted the sand and the walking was easy and very enjoyable. It was a beautiful sunny day too. We chose to walk against the cars and because it was so early, there weren't many cars driving towards us to avoid. I was dreading this day but it turned out to be the easiest day of the three days.

We did need to show proof we had been vaccinated for Covid to stay at the campsites and they do need to be booked and paid for through the National Parks website. Our camp fees for two nights were only $13.70 each and the Micat ferry was $68 each, so it was a pretty cheap holiday to the island.

People can take their cars on the ferry and drive themselves around the island. There is paid secure parking at the Ferry terminal, or free parking about 100 metres up the road. We were lucky and got dropped off by a family member and picked up on our return.

We enjoyed a hot sausage roll, toasties and drinks on the ferry. It was another great, bushwalking trip to a beautiful place close to Brisbane. Another group from our club is planning a four-day hike later in the year down the Southern end of the Island.