Day 7 : Brisbane to Moreton Island

This morning we packed up and left our one night stay on the Gold Coast to head north to Brisbane. Here is a view of the ocean from our hotel room.

 I know I teach my students how big this country is, but the reality is something different. The distance we are traveling over 3 weeks is similar to the distance from Florida to Maine. The Pacific Highway 1 goes around the entire continent, but of course would take a long time to do. Many Australians have not gone to the west coast and even fewer have seen Uluru (Ayers Rock).  

We went only about an hour today to Brisbane which is the third largest city in Australia with about 2 million people. Sydney is the largest but Melbourne is rapidly growing and may pass Sydney soon. The locals call Brisbane "Brisee" like many words they like to shorten it and add an e. Brisbane was originally home to some of the worst convicts that were brought to Australia from the UK. The streets here are all named after members of the British monarchy.

We stopped a few places in the city to see Parliment and Kangaroo point. 

Around lunch we then grabbed a ferry to take us to Moreton Island where we will stay for two nights. The island is the third largest sand island in the world and is home to one resort and three townships of about 80 vacation homes each.  The resort we stayed at is called Tangalooma and it is the location that they filmed the movie Scooby Doo a few years back. It is their winter so the resort is not very busy, nor is the weather too hot. After quickly checking into our rooms we boarded the busses for the desert. After maybe 15 minutes of navigating through the thick forests - we came to an opening....

Here we had the chance to try sand tobogganing. It's pretty simple to do, they give you a pièce of plywood and just before headed down the hill, they wax one side and help you get positioned. You have to hold up the front of the board slightly or it will dig in the sand and you'll stop. The climb up was intense but going down was worth it. 

After a few runs, we went back to the resort and got ready for dolphin feeding. Each night around dusk, these Dolphins done right up to shore and are feed by the resort staff and guests. You hold a dead fish in your hand like an ice cream cone and just dip your hand in the water and the Dolphins will take it from you.