Camping, surfing, tryin' to lose my mind

This past weekend was another classic chapter in Queensland lifestyle, spent with the Collin's crew camping on Moreton Island. Moreton Island is just east of Brisbane and is only an hours ferry ride away. We loaded the ute Thursday evening and then blasted off early from work to make the 1pm ferry on Friday arvo.

There was an oil spill off the east of of Queensland in March, which was pretty serious and had actually caused the closure of the Moreton to the public until last week. Here's a picture of the beach during the spill:

But good news, it's clean now and ready to be enjoyed. This pictuer is of Honeymoon bay, which is about a 5 minute walk from where we camped. Perfect.

This is the Collins family on the ferry on the way over (from L to R: Mikaela, Steve, Janine, Chloe):

Here are the Tangalooma wrecks, just off the coast and just next to where the ferry drops us off, right onto the beach. Great snorkling and fishing around the wrecks... I guess Moreton Island was an old whaling station and these are old whaling boats after they decimated the whale population:

This was a quadding tour leaving Tangalooma as we arrived:

Driving up the beach to our camp spot on North Point:

A bypass inland for a little ways:

Sunset over the glass house mountains as seen from the north shore of Moreton Island.

This weekend was the first time I actually felt like a surfer... as in I stood up almost more than I fell face first and bounced off the bottom. There was a sweet little point break off the north point where you had to hike in for about 15 minutes because there was no other access. On Sunday we actually walked down the sand blow you see in the pic, wicked scenery. Dive in off the rocks and away you go. Sunday's session was the best surf experience I've ever had.

Part of the reason we started from the sand blow on Sunday was because we ran into a ranger who told us about the spotting of 5-6 5m+ bronze whalers (f'ing man eating sharks) on the south end of the island. So we took the high road to see if we could see anything in the water before we dove in.... luckily no whalers in site that day... Here's a link to a story about the siting, there was a picture in the paper but I can't find it online.

Good times.

This weekend I'm off to Perth to visit my friend Jeremy (visited him in Vietnam in '06), James and Alisha (fellow Cdns who I worked with in Egypt and Fort McMurray), and Joe Lyttle (worked with in Fort McMurray but he now lives in Perth). Just quick Friday to Sunday jaunt, looking forward to it though!