Tuesday, March 20, 2018

On Moreton Island

Moreton Island is a sand island off the east coast of Brisbane.  It's only sand, there's no underlying geology. The surface of the island is continually changing.  Sand dunes slowly migrate across, engulfing anything in their path.  There's one dune they call Mount Tempest.  At 285 meters (935 feet) in elevation, it is thought to be the largest stabilized sand dune in the world.

In the second world war it was fortified to protect Brisbane, but it never came under attack.  The US military and the Australian military cooperated to build the roads on the island which are still in use.  One can't get grading equipment out to the island, so they are unmaintained.

It has been a vacation spot for thousands of years.  The now extinct aboriginal tribe of Ngugi are thought to be the original human settlers on the island, and there are several large shell middens which indicate a great many parties were held on the island thousands of years before the snorkelers in 4WD vehicles of today.  It has existed for about 700,000 years and will eventually be washed away.

There are no koalas and kangaroo on Moreton, since they have no way to get out there, but there's ample eucalyptus.  The island has it's own fresh water table simply because of rainfall collecting in the sand.  The largest dunes are covered in small irregularly shaped pebbles caused by direct strikes of lightning, forming natural glass.

The name is pronounced MOR-tuhn, like the salt in the US.  The "e" is literally a bureaucratically-preserved typographic mistake from the 1700's.  It should have never been in the name.  One gets there on a ferry.  There is a small residential community on the bay side, and there are two resorts.

Most of the tourism traffic is day visitors like myself.

Australia has a bit of a reputation for beating the shit out of visitors.  Before this trip I was wondering how my casualties would surface.  The answer was Moreton Island.

One gets to the island by riding this ferry.  Only 4WD vehicles can navigate the unsealed and unmaintained roads on the island.  The trip is about an hour, there's an ample food and beverage concession on board.  It was on-board this vessel that I had my first Australian meat pie and solved the how-to-order-coffee mystery which I will write about elsewhere.

The ferry ride is about an hour, and you're sharing the ride with literally everyone going to the island that day not arriving by private craft.  The ferry lands by going right up on the beach.  I came to Moreton Island on a day tour called, appropriately enough, "Get Wrecked on Moreton Island."

I had insufficiently researched this activity.  My first clue was when we were disembarking the boat.  All of the people my age went in one direction, myself and the college kids went in another.  The first activity was "sandboarding."  In retrospect I wonder what I was thinking.

That dune in the distance, on the right,
 is about 350 feet tall.
Sandboarding involves waxing up a 4x1 ft plank of flexible board and sliding down the steep side of a 350 ft tall sand dune on your stomach.  It's quite thrilling, but most appropriate for someone half my age, or someone my age in much better physical condition than I.  Sliding down the dune was just a matter of holding on and not freaking out.  The real risk of the activity is wiping out and getting sand in places you didn't know sand could go.

The part that begs one to be age/fitness appropriate is walking back up the dune to repeat the activity.  This is a (slowly) moving wind-blown dune.  The sand is soft.  I did it, but when I made it back to the top I made one of those life decisions one is absolutely forever certain of from the moment it is made: I'm not doing that again.



I slid down the dune once more and then began the walk back to the bus.  I was wiped out physically.  Sand had rendered my camera dysfunctional.  I didn't know what we were doing until I got there, so I had to take my camera down the dune as well.  Not a great move.

Here's a bunch of college kids trying to pretend
I'm not here.
The bus took us back to the beach where we had a sandwich lunch.  I stretched out under a tarp the tour company put up and enjoyed the gentle ocean breezes.  In a few minutes I noticed it was suddenly very quiet around me.  The rest of the group had gone kayaking and they left the tired old man who was in over his head alone.  Similarly, they did the same for the snorkeling after that.

I was ambivalent.  On the one hand, I was tired and laying on the beach in the shade with a cool breeze sure felt like the kind of vacation I was imagining when I planned all this.  On the other, no one asked me if I wanted to come along or stay behind.  They just left me.  I felt bad.

This and some other things which happened on this trip reminded me that the idea I have of my life in my head and the reality I live in the world don't always reconcile.  This trip helped me to see, starkly and plainly, how I confuse my interior fantasy life with the real world in one area of my life.  It's the thirty-year old Richard who could get away with just booking a day trip without really paying attention to details.  The thirty-year-old Richard can do whatever a bunch of tourists can do.  He doesn't have to look any deeper until he gets there.

The reality is I should have looked into all this and booked the tour that all the other aging hippies on the ferry went on.  They looked jazzed when they got back on the ferry.  They were driven around the island in a boat to gaze at fish and natural formations all day.

Instead of doing that I was wondering what all these college kids were thinking as they quietly moved away from me on the beach for the kayaking and snorkeling activities among deliberate shipwrecks just off the main beach.

In the 1960's and 1970's they wrecked these boats right off the beach to encourage coral growth.  This was the "Get Wrecked" part of the tour that I booked because I wanted to see some reefs.  This is as close as I got to them.  I can swim that far, but I was never issued any equipment, or given the option to decline.  Everyone was happy to pretend I was signaling my desire to not be included by sleeping on the beach.  I was actually doing neither.  I wasn't sleeping, and I didn't want to be left out.

I should have hopped this fucken Jet Ski and taken off.
I don't eat very much, so I finished lunch early.  I reclined under the tarp so I would not get sunburned.  It was comfortable.  My only problem was my thoughts.

My advanced age also comes with the hard-won wisdom that it is always up to me to enjoy myself.  So I held my hurt feelings with compassion and enjoyed the ferry ride back to Brisbane port.  I got to watch a container ship maneuver in to be unloaded.  That was interesting, it's quite the sea ballet.

Like an awkward first date with someone you clearly will never get along with, I was glad to return to Brisbane City after this tour.  I can't really recommend the tour company because no one ever asked me what I did or didn't want to do, so I won't name them.  It wasn't their fault, but they could have handled it better.

Moreton Island is stunningly gorgeous.  I recommend a visit.  Just read the brochure.