Escape to Coochiemudlo Island

Coochiemudlo Island sits in Moreton Bay, ringed almost entirely by public foreshore, a rarity among its neighboring islands. On this walking tour, you'll follow the island's full shoreline, from Quandamooka Dreaming stories to Matthew Flinders' 1799 landing.

The tour starts at the Elizabeth Street Ferry Terminal, beside Foreshore Park, and follows the water's edge past Main Beach's surf club and car barge ramp. You'll pass Quirky Cottages' converted railway carriages, climb Capembah Street past gardens where Rainbow Lorikeets gather, and descend Moreton's Steps, hand-built by early farmers to reach their old jetty.

Along Morwong Beach, you'll look out toward Peel Island, once a leprosy colony, and North Stradbroke Island's sand-mining ridge. You'll wind through the Melaleuca Wetlands' paperbark trees, spot Aboriginal scarred trees once used for smoking fish and canoe-building, and pass a quiet creekside shrine remembering a local jogger. The tour ends back at Foreshore Park, near the ferry terminal, where takeaway kiosks and the Red Rock Cafe make a good spot to wait for your return trip.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how a Quandamooka Dreaming story explains the island's red rock spine, formed by a speared dolphin's blood
• Learn why cane toads introduced in the 1970s wiped out the island's goannas, once central to that same story
• See a mural at Main Beach depicting Matthew Flinders and Trim, the ship's cat who sailed with him
• Find a former midden site near the Tree Graveyard, where fallen old trees mark decades of coastal erosion
• Hear how two tourists were rescued from sinking mud in Muddy Bay's mangroves in 2015
• Learn how electricity finally reached the island in the 1970s, with its switching-on ceremony lit by gaslight
• Spot Galahs and Rainbow Lorikeets feeding in a private garden along Capembah Street

By the time you reach Foreshore Park, you'll understand how this small island's shoreline holds both Quandamooka heritage and generations of island life.