Meadbh AND Kelly here! We’re really trying to get this blog up and running again! A few days before my parents left Australia, Meadbh’s mom, Regina, arrived. After she and Meadbh traveled to Kangaroo Island while I was in New Zealand, they needed a new adventure for the following weekend (Meadbh’s 21st Birthday Weekend!!). They had a hard time deciding where to go, so Meadbh consulted me for help. Seeing as my only travel reference was the Australia travel book I had in my room, we had fairly limited resources. After thumbing through the book for literally ten minutes, I suggested a random island off the coast of Brisbane. Having few other options and seeing evidence of dolphins and shipwrecks, we both decided it looked perfect! Moreton Island, here we come!
So, early that Thursday, we woke up and were on our way. We were the first to arrive at the ferry dock and waited anxiously, along with our new friend Al, for the Tangalooma Express to arrive. When the weather fell dreary, Al assured us that, “It never rains on Moreton Island! It’s just liquid sunshine!” Yeah, real funny Al. We sure saw an awful lot of liquid sunshine that weekend. After about an hour on the ferry, we finally got to Moreton Island. We were greeted as we disembarked the ferry and were quickly shown to our room, via golf cart! After unpacking, we looked around to see what the island had to offer, settling on a quad tour as our first day’s entertainment. Somehow, the men running the quad tour decided that we looked like pretty capable ‘quaders’ and instead of putting us in the group of riders who didn’t know the gas from the break, we were thrown in with the next contestants for the BMX races. Our group was quickly down-sized when the mother of the family, who we decided was reconciling a divorce, fell off her bike and hurt her wrist. When that family left, we were ready to go with them, scared to conquer the same hill that had just tipped mom’s quad right over. Little did we know, this was hardly the worst of the trail. We continued, following the experts through twists, turns, and figure eights, our hands getting sore from holding on so tight, until it was finally over. We had a great time and quite the adventure, but we were all thankful to be alive and in better shape than the divorcee (who we decided could quite possibly also be terminally ill and have had her child out of wed-lock? Not that it’s any of our business…). 
That night, we went down to the pier to participate in our “complementary” dolphin-feeding experience. Rumor has it on Moreton Island, that ever since they put lights on the pier, wild dolphins have been coming in each night to be fed. We waded into the water, with fish in hand, to feed the dolphins and get a picture. Meadbh, Regina, and I seemed to be the only few toughing it out without waiters, even though we were going to be in the water for less than 5 minutes. We all fed Tangle, who was Tinkerbell’s baby. It was awesome to be that close to a dolphin and definitely a highlight of my weekend in Tangalooma!
The next morning, we woke up and it was Meadbh’s Birthday! We started the 21-shot challenge right away…just kidding J We decided to walk along the beach and get closer to the shipwreck which was just off the coast. Along the way, there were hundreds of starfish, bigger than any that I’ve ever seen before. When approaching the shipwreck, we were amazed that a ship could sink and get stuck 50 feet off the shore, especially with nothing to crash into. Why did they not just pull it out of the water one may wonder? Oh, that’s right, that’s because they staged it (like every other ‘shipwreck’ in Australia, we soon found out!). Major disappointment, but nonetheless, very cool to look at. Next, we decided to hire a dingy in order to get up close to the wreck…which at this point, we still thought was real. Unfortunately, ten minutes of dingy school didn’t teach us much and we were a bit helpless when it came to operating the boat. No worries, we would deal with turning the motor back on when the time came; right now, it was time to fish! It didn’t take long for us to give up on the fishing and to become seemingly stranded in the middle of the ocean. Dad would have been very proud of me at this point because I was able to get the motor up and running successfully! However, getting the dingy back to shore was a whole other issue. We killed the motor a bit too early and ended up breaking out the paddles to get us back. When this was even more unsuccessful, Meadbh fought the motor back into the water and we were off, not caring about scraping the motor in the sand this time.
Still having time with our fishing equipment, we decided to try a new location: the pier. I went first and caught a fish on the first cast! Too bad none of us knew how to take it off the line. Fortunately, we had a cooperative fish and he did the deed himself, how convenient. Next, it was Meadbh’s turn and sure enough, after a few casts, she also caught a fish! Following the previously adopted rule that a person’s turn lasts until they catch a fish, Regina took her turn for the rest of our stay on Moreton Island. She clearly wanted a fish more than anyone, but the fish were un-cooperative. She did, however, come very close to hooking a penguin-like bird who was swimming below the pier.
Every night on Morteton Island, there was an event at night in the lounge. Since it was Meadbh’s Birthday, we decided to go down and see what was going on. When we arrived, we were thrilled to find out that the Tangalooma Races were in town! They consisted of six wooden horses, being moved around on a life-size game board by children (including wed-lock boy). For awhile, we just watched, but then we decided to get in on the bets. When they auctioned off the horses at the end, we came out of nowhere and splurged on 2 horses! I bet Meadbh never imagined getting a pony for her birthday. Once we owned the horses (mine was a complete bargain-$5, Meadbh’s was a pure bred- $20), we got to name them and pick a jockey. Birthday Bash was jockeyed by Meadbh, and Just For Jack was supposed to be jockeyed by me. Luckily, wed-lock stepped up and did it for me. Unfortunately, neither of our horses pulled though in the end, and we didn’t even get to take them home. After noticing that the same girl who had greeted us at the pier when we first arrived at Tangalooma was also the one running the horse races, we soon felt like we were part of a scary movie where there are hardly any people on the deserted island which is run by the same five people carrying out every single job. We decided to pull Christie aside and ask her what was going on with this island anyway…is there anything here besides Tangalooma Resort? And the answer: no. While we had Christie’s attention, we decided to hit her with about 10 more questions, until she was too overwhelmed and had to call in reinforcement. This is when our dreams of seeing a “real” shipwreck were crushed. However, we were all very relieved to find out that the dolphins we had fed were, in fact, wild and were not caged underneath the pier.
The highlight of the weekend happened after our chat with Christie when we went back out to the pier after the dolphin feeding for the night had ended. We hoped that we might be able to see the dolphins before they headed back out to sea and, sure enough, we did. That night we saw nine dolphins swimming under and around the pier. We watched them for about an hour, running from one side of the pier to the other, trying to keep a running count of how many there were. Seeing those dolphins swimming so close to us, bobbing up and down beneath the water, was probably one of my favorite memories of Australia. I have never been so close to a dolphin before.
Our trip to Moreton Island was definitely one for the books. It was a strange place filled with a whole cast of characters, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. We had a lot of laughs and a great few days away. Thank you again, Regina and Meadbh, for an awesome weekend as a Kennedy =)
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