The perfect island getaway - North Stradbroke Island, Australia

While only about 1 hour from Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, you’ll feel a million miles on North Stradbroke Island, known as Straddie by local Queenslanders. With pristine beaches with amazing waves for surfing and swimming, a large protected bay for fishing, diving, wild bushland with cool fresh water lakes - it’s a great destination for everyone who loves the outdoors. There are loads of holiday houses just waiting to be used for a home exchange.

Stunning, empty beaches

Main Beach is fantastic for body surfing and the board riders gather there for perfect waves peeling off the point. It’s protected from the northerly breeze as well.

For sunbathers and those that like calm water, the cove right next to the main beach is ideal. It’s a small protected beach with rock walls around, so it’s well protected from the wind and the big waves, making it ideal for families, sunbathers and those that want to enjoy calm water.

Cylinder Beach faces north towards Moreton Island, and you can see the white sand dunes of the neighboring island in the distance. It’s a great swimming beach with lots of white sand to sit on.

At low tide you can walk around the rocks from beach to beach from Cylinder Beach along to Deadmans Beach (an unpatrolled beach). On the way you’ll pass a really high sand dune popular with sand boarders. However, when we visited the bottom of the dune had been washed away and so the bottom of the run is now rocks and not so safe for boarding anymore. You’ll be able to walk around to Frenchmans beach, another unpatrolled beach that’s beautiful to walk along.

Wildlife spotting from above

The impressive headland walk, called the Gorge Walk at Point Lookout is a stunning walk along the top of the headland and around a few gorges. You’ll be able to look below from lots of viewpoints and see the amazingly blue water and spot the dark shapes of sharks, dolphins and turtles swimming by.

Between June and November every year the headland becomes the perfect spot to watch migrating whales. The headland walk offers a number of great viewing locations for whales, as it’s located right next to the “whale highway” that whales move along to migrate north to warm waters for their calving grounds, and south when the baby whales are big enough to go to their Antarctic feeding waters.

Fishing on the bay

Amity Point is a popular spot for keen fisherman and families who like the calm bay-side water. You might also be lucky to spot pods of dolphins swimming by the pier.

Freshwater lakes

Other attractions on North Stradbroke Island are the Brown Lake recreation area and the Blue Lake national park. Blue Lake is a great spot to see local wildlife at dawn and dusk, and is reached by walking through the wilderness on a 4km-round trip track.

Brown Lake is a unique experience, with its brown but crystal clear fresh water stained by the tannin in the tea-tree trees that surround it.

Dive with sharks

There are some great dive spots on North Stradbroke Island so you can spend even more time in the water. Shag Rock and Flat Rock are well known for their large population of leopard sharks and grey nurse sharks, and Manta Bommie offers amazing manta ray encounters between November and February.

Eating on the Island

There is a great bakery at Point lookout that sells pies and bread and sweets. Next to it is a café. We’d recommended bringing as much food as you can over from the mainland to save spending it all on island prices. The pub at cylinder beach is a great spot for an afternoon drink and has nice meals, all with a great view of the beach.

Getting there and away

The only access to Stradbroke Island is via boat from Cleveland. There are passenger and car ferries that take about 30 mins to make the crossing. Holiday makers are recommended to bring their car over so they can get from the ferry landing at Dunwich around to Point Lookout where the surf beaches are, 20km away.

More information can be found on the official North Stradbroke Island website.

Thanks to Fly on the Wall for the permission to use the stunning photographs.