Scarborough, Queensland, 11th January 1970 (midsummer almost). The day dawned drearily, sky overcast, the last of the night’s seabreeze, just a whisper from the east, barely stirred the leaves of the old cottonwoods fringing the sandy beach. We’d been up for hours, checking our gear and then rigging and loading our Mirror 16 beside the concrete ramp a hundred yards from our front gate.

After launching, our blue-hulled pride and joy sat sombrely on the sand, just above the tide’s edge. She was newly acquired, second-hand and still unnamed — despite many suggestions from family and friends — and known to leak a bit! Despite all efforts to reduce the mounting stash of camping gear, food and water carefully measured out — two boys and a father for four days, augmented by extra for the teenager crew of our escorting Quickcat, a 15-foot plywood, hard-chine, catamaran! Eventually launched, after a good deal of heaving and shoving — we had yet to learn the help blow-up rollers can give — our log-keeper reported the time, 0955 hours Eastern Standard Time already! As we headed out into our little bay between Osborne and Drury Points, we hastily checked the water level in the centreboard case; thankfully it remained an inch or so below the boat’s floor. We really were floating!

Our first ‘voyage’ at last! For years we had come to the family’s tiny beach shack on the eastern shore of the Redcliffe Peninsula for the school holidays. Redcliffe was the site of the first European settlement (then a penal outpost, 1824) on the ‘Queensland-to-be’ coastline. Time after time we had gazed wistfully at the dark-hued Moreton Island, mysterious and beckoning, looming on the horizon just twelve or so miles across the bay. This morning it wore a shroud of cloud. Gnoorganlam to long-gone generations of the Aboriginal people (the Nooghies), few people live there permanently now but the island gives holiday-makers from the nearby State capital, Brisbane, a wonderful playground.

The island is a vast sand mass thirty-something miles long from north to south. The island is several miles wide at the northern end, slimming to a few hundred yards of sandy spit in the south. There the shallow, turbulent and ever-changing South Passage separates Moreton from North Stradbroke Island. Initially the main route for ships from Sydney to the Moreton Bay Settlement, the passage was the downfall of several ships in the early days and, more conspicuously, the Liberty ship, Rufus King, in 1951, whose rusted ribs still poke above the sand at low tide. The tide has a range of about six feet twice daily and a shipping channel, kept dredged, enters the bay from the north.

We knew the Pacific Ocean’s surf pounded the island’s seaward shore but, except in wild, westerly weather in winter, quieter waters lapped the fine sand in the bay. The tangled hills, tree-clad mounds of sand, still miles away, stretched skyward with Mt Tempest (915 ft) the highest. At the southern end, the bare white sand of the Big Sandhills (300ft) and Little Sandhill (100ft) glimmered in the dull, morning light.

Both sloop-rigged, our boats made slow progress eastward, mean course 110°, tacking back and forth to clear the rocks off Drury Point. Anxious to try our home-taught navigation skills, we took half-hourly bearings with an old Army prismatic compass. At 1030 hours, then a bare half-mile offshore, our heading was 020°; Garnet Rock bore 194° and Redcliffe Watertower 216°. Our progress so painfully slow and Tony offered, “If the land breeze comes in behind us, would the spinnaker help?” “Yes indeed, but where, where’s the pole?” The first small patches of blue sky appeared by 1100 hours, our heading 160°, wind still less than 5 knots east. At 11.30 the log read “fine & very hot”, Redcliffe Watertower 245°, Bongaree Watertower (on Bribie Island) 338°. Then, much excitement at 1145 — a small shark swam lazily past on the surface a few feet from us. At noon, Square Patch (one of several sand ‘cliffs’ on the bay side of the island) bore 070° but by 1330 hours, the faintest breeze had died to nothing. Bored and sweltering in the hot midday sun, the relative coolness of the water (probably about 25°C) the boys dived in and swam around the boats while father watched anxiously for a puff of wind and, even more anxiously, for any sign of a shark!

After drifting almost aimlessly about the M3 buoy marking the NE end of the Four Fathom Bank and still about 3 miles off the island, we reluctantly started the Seagull outboard, passed a towline to our friends in the engineless Quickcat, and headed straight for the beach. We had hoped to sail all the way! An hour later, Seagull tank almost drained, we made landfall at Tangalooma, in the ’50s and ’60s a whaling station but now a tourist resort. So, six hours after launching, we phoned news of our safe arrival to those waiting at home. That duty done, we set off again slowly southwards just off the beach.

We rounded Tangalooma Point, passed by Ship Patch and, landing at Square Patch (another sand ‘cliff’), we climbed the steeply sloping loose sand. At last reaching the lip, puffed and pleased, we looked out on our boats on the beach below, then across the blue-grey of the shallow bay to the peninsula (our starting point) encrusted with houses and marked by a significant landmark (the watertower). In the boats once more, we continued slowly southwards, past the shallow Shark Spit and the beach-bound, rusty and oyster-encrusted remains of two small steamers until we reached the Big Sandhill. We motored slowly over the shallowing seabed towards the shore, anchoring in waist-deep crystal clear water. At low tide much of this foreshore dries out, revealing extensive patches of seagrass liberally sprinkled with half-buried razor and turban shells and oyster clumps. We found a campsite under the sheoaks above the beach but the area seemed much used and rather ‘tired’ — and the sandflies rose in clouds — so we opted for the narrow beach a little further north near the wrecks we’d passes earlier. As dusk approached, we dragged the laden boats up the beach above the high tide mark, handed the sails, stretched them between the boats as an awning, spread out our beds beneath and set about cooking a meal (chops, potatoes, etc) on the campfire. We had rather underestimated our water needs for the voyage so tried boiling our potatoes and rice in seawater. We enjoyed the potatoes but couldn’t eat the rice.

Rising rather later next morning, we found the sky overcast again and no wind so we struck the awning, packed our gear, and set off on foot along the beach to explore the southern end of the island. Reaching the foot of the Big Sandhills we laboriously climbed to the top and down the other side, to our surprise, we found a freshwater soak where fresh piles of dung indicated the presence of brumbies. Making our way through a half-mile of brush, we reached the ocean beach and spent a relaxing hour fishing (nothing caught) and surfing. Later, we set off by compass to skirt the SE corner of the sandblows (which create the Sandhillls) and, on reaching the bay shore again, retraced our steps along the beach to our campsite. A storm seemed to be brewing in the south, so we re-erected our awning and had a quick evening meal before securing our gear and turning in. Shortly afterwards (at 2015), the night sky was split by bright flashes of lightning accompanied by crashes of thunder — and down pelted the rain. Quickly we set our bailing buckets to catch the rainwater pouring off the awning, only to find, of course, that the first bucketful was very salty from the seaspray the sails had collected. The subsequent buckets were drinkable, fortunately, so we were able to replenish our water bottles for the return trip home.

Next morning dawned fine and clear, so we broke camp, launched the boats and set off for home at 0805, wind south 5 knots, course 290°. We set the spinnaker on a makeshift pole (we’d left the proper one on the beach when we set off from home!!) and by 0900 we reached the confused water marked by four beacons in a square, where the shipping channel crosses a dredged sandbar. At 0930, the Cowan Cowan light bore 029° and Redcliffe Watertower 252°. Half an hour later, we changed course to 265° and sailed slowly over a calm sea towards home. By 1100, the wind had failed and, paddles out when the Seagull fuel finally ran out, we made our way laboriously past the North Reef beacon and, tired but satisfied, reached our home beach just after noon.

So ended our first big adventure, not much of a sailing experience, unfortunately, but an exciting one just the same and the precursor of many more ‘voyages’, often exhilarating ones, in after years.

1. Moreton Bay was named ‘Morton Bay’ by James Cook on his Endeavour voyage up the East Coast in 1770, though he did not enter. The first recorded entry by a European vessel was Matthew Flinders’ Investigator in 1803.

2. Apart from the shipping channel, kept by dredging, the bay is fairly shallow with lots of sandbanks, most remain covered at low tide so are no worry to dinghy sailors but make things difficult for keelboats.

3. A typical summer’s day has light offshore land breezes early in the day, south-east winds 10-15 knots for most of the morning, dying away to a dead calm for an hour or two at midday when the air temperature may reach 30° and then the afternoon seabreeze from the north-east sets in, mostly 15-20 knots.

4. For most of the bay the tidal streams (about 1 knot at most) can be disregarded but rising to perhaps 6 knots at half-tide at the north-east and south-west corners of Moreton Island.

5. As is probably quite apparent, the photographs above were not taken at the time of this voyage, the camera was also left at home! However, it does show our Mirror 16 (sail number 152), at least one reef in and crewed by four of five teenagers on a fairly windy day; and its companion the Quickcat snapped on another occasion just off our beach where further crew were waiting patiently for their turn!

6. The chart is ‘borrowed’ from Bell, J.P. Moreton Bay and how to fathom it, 7th ed, Courier-Mail, Brisbane.