Dinner by a Victoria point creek

A line of restaurants lined one side of Eprapah Creek where I ate lunch. On the opposite side, the stream that branched out into a mini lake was lined with gum trees. My eyes were fixed on the water while I chewed on something, though I don’t remember what.  Below, Eprapah Creek that flowed from Mt Cotton into Moreton Bay was about twelve kilometres long.

Karragarra island

We caught the ferry over to Karragarra Island, a small island across from Russell Island in Moreton Bay that we intended to walk around. On one side was a narrow strip of sandy beach and on the opposite side, mangroves.

Walking over family ground

In my family, our grandfather was a mystery. He has been talked of, speculated about, but no one could pin down his elusive past. One period we were certain of, was when he owned a large stretch of land.

By the Bay

Only a couple of streets away from where I stayed during my last Brisbane visit was Moreton Bay. I headed to Waterloo Bay’s foreshore where a giant pandanus stood at one end of a small park, and sparkling water off shore.

Above the city

Mt Cootha was home to Brisbane’s four original television towers hidden amongst the eucalyptus forest. But we had come for the view. It had been decades since I’d driven up to Mt Cootha to see Brisbane and the surrounding region spread out like a map.

A hidden beach

During Queensland’s summer months, Wellington Point’s gritty beach was a popular local spot for families with small children. I remember it was busy and often difficult to find parking.

Wellington Point’s hidden trail

Around the other side of Wellington Point’s long spit, was a cement pathway that most people ignored, including me. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve visited this thin strip of land stretching out into Moreton Bay. But on my last visit, I wanted to see part of the bay from a different location and noticed the trail.

Return to a childhood haunt

Personally King Island had a completely different history from the one I wrote in my last Auz post. To me it was a fascinating island because it could be reached on foot at low tide. Originally called Yerra-bin by the Aboriginal people of Quandamooka (Moreton Bay), the name was later changed to King.

Tiny island in the bay

King Island was a small island off Wellington Point that was a popular Moreton Bay tourist destination in the early 1900s. For a couple of years during that era, the Phillips family lived on the island because one of their children was advised to bathe daily in the salt water to ease her polio symptoms.

Return to Sandy Beach

Over a year later, I returned to the same Russell Island beach where North Stradbroke Island stretched like a giant crocodile across the channel. Last visit, the tide was high and the beach appeared no more than a metre wide, but on my next trip, the tide was out, and the rippled sand stretched for one hundred metres to the sea.