South Stradbroke Island Information

South Stradbroke Island

Natural treasures can sometimes be found in the most unlikely places – even on an island just minutes from the glitz of the Gold Coast.
Couran Cove resort on Queensland's South Stradbroke Island
On South Stradbroke Island, just across the Broadwater from the mainland, wanderers can watch the rising sun turn the castle-like Gold Coast apartments a golden yellow as a lone wallaby lollops up a deserted beach.
Looking down the kilometres of wide, white sand, the high-rise huddle seems to float in the surf, like a concrete island metropolis.
The glow of rising dawn, the sigh of the surf and the fresh smell of rainforest mixed with salty sea air seems a long way from Queensland's famous holiday mecca.
But Dreamworld, Movieworld, Sea World and Wet'n'Wild Waterworld are all within a 30-minute boat, car, bus, or – for some – a 20-minute helicopter ride.
For "parked-out" parents, the island is a welcome retreat; for children, it's a healthy, educational playground. Behind South Stradbroke's 22km ocean beach, the sand dunes, protected by boardwalks, are being slowly nurtured back to their original state.
From 1951 to 1970, the dunes were torn apart in the hunt for valuable mineral sands. The wild cattle that once roamed the island were also removed in the '70s.
Inland, just beyond the dunes, the island is a mass of ferns and forest, including melaleuca wetland and one of the largest remnants of surviving livistonia rainforest in south east Queensland.
It's a serene setting for Couran Cove Resort.
The complex, laced by a network of bicycle tracks, offers bush and marina accommodation in self-contained nature cabins and two and three-bedroom waterfront lodges. It is one of the biggest timber complexes in the southern hemisphere.
The resort's facilities, which can accommodate as many as 1200 people, are hidden among forest and ferns, cultivating the impression of isolated tranquillity.
While parents take an easy ride through the dappled sunlight of the forest to a secluded stretch of coast for some relaxed beachcombing, the young and active can sail, kayak, jet ski and waterski. Then there's beach fishing, tennis courts, a rockclimbing wall, gymnasium, 25m swimming pool and an Olympic-standard 110m tartan sprint track with an electronic stopwatch.
And don't forget the baseball and softball pitching cage, beach volleyball, bocce, lawn bowls, shuffleboard, surfing and an adventure ropes course. Golfers have the choice of a 12-minute boat trip to either Hope Island's The Links or Sanctuary Cove's The Palms courses.
As if that weren't enough, the resort also has a rugby field that, over the years, has been used by both the Australian Wallabies and the British Lions for training.
This monument to physical exertion is counterbalanced by the serenity of its natural setting. Painted in muted colours of blue-grey and grey-green, the inland cabins blend with the bush.
With composite bamboo flooring, solar hot water systems and mosquito-netted verandahs, their curved roofs, louvre windows and fans take advantage of natural ventilation under the forest canopy, where temperatures are five to seven degrees cooler than on the coast. Bones are the only refuse item that leave the island; sewage and other organic waste, along with paper and cardboard, is fed to the worm farm.
The new Gwondabah Environment Centre, a focus for school group tours and information walks, is a good place to begin an educational journey on South Stradbroke.
The centre has displays explaining the island's natural and colourful cultural history.
Aboriginal lore has it that the early coastal people fished with the dolphins, making noises in the water with their spears and clubs to attract the mammals, who then helped the people round up schools of mullet. The fish were driven towards the shore, where the Aborigines repaid the favour by sharing some of the catch with their marine friends.
The island's sandbanks and mudflats are the breeding and feeding grounds for more than 50,000 migrating birds from as far away as Alaska, China and Siberia. From June to October, visitors can watch migrating whales cruise past the ocean beach.
A forest walk passes through a twilight world of symbiotic and parasitic plants; through melaleuca wetland where the ranks of off-white paperbark trees look like gangly, flailed mummies standing in green ponds. About 90 per cent of melaleuca wetlands, recognised as one of the Australian tropics' most productive eco-systems, have been cleared from south-east Queensland's coastline.
Its plants were used by the Aborigines for food, cooking, shelter and medicines. Fruits harvested from the wetland's trees and shrubs included lilly pillys, figs, wild ginger and bluetongue. Flowers from wattles, tea-trees, cottonwood trees and banksias were eaten or soaked in water to make sweet drinks.
South Stradbroke is also home to agile wallabies, flying foxes, bats, sugar gliders, squirrel gliders, short-beaked echidnas and bandicoots.
More than 35 species of butterfly can be found on the island, which is visited by more than 200 of Australia's 750 bird species.
The writer was a guest of Tourism Queensland and Couran Cove Resort.

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FACT FILE
Getting there: Qantas or Virgin Blue to Brisbane or Coolangatta. Coach transfer to Runaway Bay Marina (from $36 adult and $29 child return from Coolangatta, $67 adult and $54 child from Brisbane). Couran Cove is a 20-minute ferry or water taxi ride to South Stradbroke Island from Runaway Bay Marina.
Package: A three-night stay at Couran Cove is from $336pp twin-share, with a bonus of $200 credit (cannot be redeemed for cash) per booking. The package, from Harvey World Travel and Sunlover Holidays, also includes upgrade to a Marine Suite and free accommodation for children under 12. Available: until March 24, excluding Dec 26 to Jan 23 period.
Details: phone 132757, www.harveyworld.com.au
Visit: The World Heritage-listed Lamington National Park is a day trip from the resort; 160km of trails, past spectacular waterfalls and through groves of giant ancient trees.
Details: 1800 268726, or www.couran.com.

The Sunday Telegraph

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