Qualla: Bribie Island

Bribie Island: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. For roughly twenty years, one of Australia's greatest modernist painters lived here in a hut he built himself, with no electricity, no running water, and a roof that leaked. Ian Fairweather had drifted to Bribie Island in 1953 after surviving a near-fatal sixteen-day raft voyage from Darwin toward Timor. He was sixty-one, Scottish-born, and done with the world's expectations. On this long, low spit of sand at the top of Moreton Bay, he painted in self-imposed poverty until his death in 1974, producing works now considered among the finest this country has made. The island has a way of attracting people who want to disappear into it.

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bribie Island: Yarun, the Sand Island

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit S. Newrick, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before any European set eyes on it, this was Yarun -- the name the Joondoburri people gave to the smallest and most northerly of the three great sand islands that shelter Moreton Bay. Thirty-four kilometres long and barely eight at its widest, Bribie is built entirely of win...

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Image: S. Newrick | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bribie Island: The Skirmish

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In July 1799, the explorer Matthew Flinders anchored off the western shore in the colonial sloop Norfolk, convinced he had reached the mainland. With him was Bungaree, an Aboriginal man from the Broken Bay region near Sydney -- a gifted diplomat far from his own country. The meet...

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Image: Public domain

Bribie Island: Guns in the Dunes

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephan Ridgway from Brisbane, Australia, CC BY 2.0. When the Second World War reached the Pacific, Bribie became Brisbane's shield. From 1939 the army built Fort Bribie at the island's northern tip, mounting two six-inch guns -- weapons that had once armed a First World War cruiser -- to cover the North West Channel, the deep-wate...

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Image: Stephan Ridgway from Brisbane, Australia | CC BY 2.0

Bribie Island: The Quiet Life

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bidgee, CC BY 3.0. Most of Bribie is still wild -- a national park covering nearly a third of the island, fringed by pine plantation and, in the south, by the easygoing towns of Bongaree, Woorim, Bellara, and Banksia Beach. The bridge that arrived in 1963 was, at the time, the longest pre-stressed ...

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Image: Bidgee | CC BY 3.0