Moreton Island

On Tuesday the 12th Jeremy and I headed over to Moreton Island for a quick stay at the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort. Moreton is located directly adjacent to Brisbane and is easily reached after taking an hour-long ferry ride. It is the 3rd largest sand island in the world - the largest being Fraser Island to the north.

Tangalooma is one of the little towns located on the island, and used to be home to the largest whaling station in the Southern Hemisphere. The whaling station closed in 1962 and was redeveloped into what is now the Wild Dolphin Resort. The resort gets its name because of the wild dolphins that come to feed each night (more on that later).

We were greeted when we arrived by the flock of pelicans that hang out by the dock, and are fed each day by a member of the marine education center at Tangalooma. They are so funny-looking and sound like pigs when they make noise - you can hear a bit of it on the video below.

I had booked a whale watching package for us, so shortly after we arrived we headed out again to spot some more humpback whales.

Tangalooma from the water

The Glasshouse Mountains (again!)

It didn't take long before we spotted some whales, but these guys were much less active than the pair we watched down in the Gold Coast. There were two pairs of humpback whales that we watched for about an hour, but all four of them seemed to be sleeping and weren't doing anything beyond surfacing to breathe. They were still beautiful though! The guide on this whale watching tour gave constant commentary on humpback behavior, which was really interesting to listen to. Did you know that when whales sleep they only rest or 'turn off' half of their brain to prevent them from drowning?

Luckily towards the very end of the trip we spotted a lone whale in the distance who was really flipping out (no pun intended!). Our boat approached it and I got some good video of his tail slapping. As we pulled away this whale was heading towards two other whales we spotted in the distance, so maybe he found some friends!

The boat went back to Tangalooma via the tip of the island, which is a favorite dolphin hangout. Sure enough, we found a small pod playing in the waves!

We also motored by the Tangalooma wrecks, which consist of fifteen vessels which have been sunk to form a safe haven for small boats and artificial reef for marine life. They are pretty neat, and I've heard that they are one of the best snorkel/dive sites in the Brisbane area.

Once we got back to Tangalooma we were able to check-in to our room, which had a nice view of the pier and beach.

Just outside of the marine education center there is a really cool marine aquarium, and in typical Aussie fashion it is filled with dangerous animals! There are two stingrays, a few little puffer fish, and one really neat looking stone fish (aka turkey or lion fish). It's also filled with less dangerous things including some really beautiful parrot fish. What I find pretty funny is that the only thing stopping people/young children from interacting directly with these animals is the sign!

Another activity run by the education center is the daily kookaburra feeding, where a staff member talks for about ten minutes about the kookaburra while feeding wild ones little strips of meat. They are really interesting birds and a lot bigger in person than they look in these pictures.


Every evening at Tangalooma a pod of wild dolphins shows up to snack on fish handed out by resort guests and education center employees. The dolphin feeding program began in 1992 when one of the wild dolphins, Beauty, began to take fish thrown to her from the jetty. The resort teamed up with the University of Queensland and started a dolphin research program here, and also began the feeding program with resort guests. It's a fantastic opportunity for them to make money! I've heard that it costs up to $90 just to come for the day and feed the dolphins at Tangalooma. We definitely didn't spend that much (in fact, the package I got was $199 and included a night's stay, whale watching, and feeding for both of us), but I'm sure loads of people do each year.

However, the whole process is strictly controlled and the employees seem to be very careful about keeping the dolphins healthy and wild. You essentially stride into the water with a fish in hand, lean down when told, and let the dolphin pick the fish from your hand and swim away. You aren't allowed to touch or photograph the dolphins when feeding, however a resort photographer would be happy to snap a pic of you for a cool $15! Our visit with the dolphins was a little bit better than usual because of the appearance of a new baby dolphin that was born about 8 days before we arrived at Tangalooma. It was terribly cute!!

The next morning we woke up and headed out on Tangalooma's desert safari, where groups are taken in big 4WD buses to huge sand dunes. I think the ride down the sand tracks in this bus was one of Jeremy's favorite moments - I definitely watched him revert to one of the giggling little boys riding in the back of the bus with us!!! Too funny.

The tours go to the dunes so that guests can participate in sand tobogganing, where they say you'll reach speeds of 40 km per hour. Indeed, it was as fun as it sounds! The hill you had to climb up was absolutely HUGE, so I only went once. I also had enough sand in all of my crevices to last me for years. Jeremy was another story, so I had the chance to catch two of his three runs on the camera. You'll notice that shortly before Jeremy went down another rider made the poor choice of walking straight down the path when his board stopped moving. The result can be seen when he gets about halfway down the hill. I love it!

After sand tobogganing we grabbed lunch, then headed out on Tangalooma's dugong eco tour. This was really neat and was held on a small boat with about 10 other people on board. We headed to the southwestern side of the island, which is a protected area for dugongs and sea turtles. The dugong is essentially the Australian form of a manatee - same size and general body shape. The skipper brought the boat into the protected area and cut the motor, and we immediately started seeing the occasional dugong surfacing 30 or 40 feet away from the boat. Jer and I stayed on one side of the boat watching for them, but changed positions after awhile to the front of the boat. Like I say on the video, we were obviously on the wrong side! There was a huge herd of dugongs feeding that we slowly drifted into, and suddenly we were completely surrounded. There must have been 30 or 40 of them in the water, and it was so clear that we could see their big bodies swimming all around us. Pretty neat!

There was also definitely at least one momma and baby swimming around, although Jeremy refused to believe me! (warning for viewers with small children - there is an expletive at the end of this video clip!)

After overloading on dugongs the skipper took the boat into more shallow water where we could see all the star fish on the sea floor. We also spotted 3 or 4 stingrays and (another highlight) a sea turtle!

The ferry back to Brisbane left immediately after we returned, so we both kicked back and enjoyed the ride home. I'm pretty sure I was asleep after 5 minutes!