History

Moreton Island

Aarhus (1894)

A Danish iron barque, 122 days out of New York with 15,760 cases of kerosene, struck Smith Rock off Cape Moreton on a February night in 1894 and sank in ten minutes. All fifteen aboard reached shore. The Marine Board blamed her captain, then turned on the pilot service that had left him waiting an hour for a pilot who never came.

Brampton Island

Brampton Island Abandoned Resort

Brampton Island in the Cumberland group ran as a resort from the 1930s and operated in various forms for eight decades before closing for good. What was left behind is island-scale: accommodation blocks, a pool, a dining pavilion, staff quarters, service infrastructure, an airstrip and a jetty, all of it maintained by nobody since. The tropics move fast on empty buildings, and salt, cyclones and vegetation have gone through the site steadily. The island is a national park with private leasehold over the resort area. The buildings are derelict and entry is not permitted.

Bribie Island

Bribie Island WWII Bunkers

Northern Bribie Island was fortified during the Second World War as part of the ring of positions watching the approaches to Moreton Bay. Bunkers, gun emplacements and observation posts were poured quickly and low, with narrow openings and siting chosen for lines of sight rather than comfort. They were never built to last. Sand, wind and salt have half-buried most of them, and some are visible only as angular concrete breaking through the dune contours. There is no central complex and no signage. Several are unstable or partially collapsed, and shifting sand can undercut edges without warning.

Mackay

Central Sugar Mill Ruins

The central mill system was built on a simple idea: rather than every plantation crushing its own cane, one mill would process the harvest of all the farms around it, running around the clock through the crushing season and connected to its suppliers by a network of narrow-gauge tramway. That model reshaped rural Queensland. Where mills have closed, what survives is heavy and immovable - concrete foundations, boiler and crusher mountings, tramway formations and loading sidings. Most of it is on working cane land. Observe from public roads and do not enter mill sites.

Moreton Island

Fort Cowan Cowan

A World War II coastal defence position on the western shore of Moreton Island, built as part of the ring of batteries guarding the approaches to Brisbane. Gun emplacements, magazines and observation structures remain among the dunes. The site is unrestored and exposed. Concrete edges and open shafts are a real hazard, so stay on formed tracks.

Peel Island

Peel Island Lazaret

Peel Island held Queensland's leprosarium for just over half a century. Patients were housed in separate compounds and the settlement operated as a closed community until it closed in 1959. Timber huts, the recreation hall and remnants of the water and drainage systems survive, and the site is one of the most intact of its kind in Australia. The lazaret area is protected and access is restricted. Check current conditions of entry before planning a landing.

Peel Island

Platypus (1926)

A Clyde-built bucket dredger that spent forty-two years cutting channels from Brisbane to the Gulf, opening much of Queensland's northern port trade. She was decommissioned in December 1923 and deliberately sunk off Peel Island in October 1926 to shelter the lazaret jetty.

North Stradbroke Island

Princeza (1863)

An Aberdeen-built brigantine driven onto the South Passage bar off Amity Point in a March gale in 1863. Her crew hove the cargo overboard and cut away the masts trying to lighten her; three days later the hull was sold where she lay for one hundred and sixty pounds.

K'gari

S.S Maheno (1935) and the 75 Mile Beach Shipwreck Corridor

The eastern beach of K'gari has taken more than a dozen vessels, making this one of the most concentrated wreck zones on the Australian coast. Surf, shifting sandbanks and an absence of shelter for the length of the island did the work. The Maheno is the best known - a trans-Tasman liner driven ashore by a cyclone in 1935 while under tow to a Japanese scrapyard - and its corroding hull is the anchor point most visitors reach. The beach is a gazetted road with aircraft using it. Wreck structures are sharp and unstable; do not climb on them.

Moreton Island

Sovereign (1847)

The paddle steamer Sovereign broke up on the South Passage bar in March 1847 with fifty-four people aboard. Forty-four drowned, in what remains the worst shipwreck of colonial Queensland, and the ten who lived were pulled from the surf by Quandamooka men who swam out to them. The loss closed the South Passage to shipping.

St Helena Island

St Helena Island Penal Establishment

St Helena operated as Queensland's high-security prison for sixty-five years, largely self-sufficient behind its own farms, sugar mill and tramway. Stone and brick ruins of the stockade, mess and superintendent's quarters remain, along with the cemetery. The island is a national park and landing is permitted only with a licensed tour operator.

Moreton Island

St Paul (1914)

A French steamer out of New Caledonia carrying 2,371 tons of chrome ore struck an uncharted pinnacle east of Smith Rock within minutes of midnight on 26 March 1914, while steering towards the pilot boat. She went down bow-first in about five minutes and no boat was ever got into the water. Eighteen of the twenty-nine aboard died, the master among them. This is the only surveyed position published for any wreck on this rock. It was derived by GPS and lies about 1.2 km east of the gazetted position of Smith Rock, which fits the 1914 evidence that she struck a pinnacle east of the rock itself.

Moreton Island

Tangalooma Wrecks

Fifteen vessels were deliberately sunk here off the western side of Moreton Island to form a sheltered anchorage for small craft. The hulks now sit in shallow water close to the beach and have become one of the most visited snorkelling and dive sites in the bay, with the wrecks acting as an artificial reef. Access is by boat. The wrecks are close together and the surrounding water is shallow, so keep well clear of the hulls under power.

Bribie Island

Woorim Beach WWII bunker

Woorim Beach WWII bunker

Moreton Island

Young Australia (1872)

An American extreme clipper, built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1852 as the Red Rover and renamed when the Black Ball Line bought her in 1861, she carried thousands of immigrants to Moreton Bay on some of the fastest runs ever made from England. On 31 May 1872, homeward bound for London with 812 bales of wool, the breeze died on her four and a half hours out of the anchorage. A heavy easterly swell laid her broadside on the rocks at North Point in fine weather and broad daylight. All thirty-one passengers and the crew were landed on the beach, most of the cargo was salvaged, and a small cannon off her deck is still in Brisbane. What survives lies in three to six metres of water in the surf zone and is progressively covered by sand.