If you’ve ever looked into going to Australia, I highly suggest heading to Moreton Island to Tangalooma Resort for the day. While you can stay overnight, we chose to do a day trip since we already had our Airbnb in Brisbane. We hit up Sydney for five days, then used Brisbane as our home base for the remaining 10 days of our stay in Australia. Why go to Moreton Island? Not only is it home to the highest coastal dune in the world, but you can see dugongs in the wild, feed wild dolphins, and so much more!

How to get to Tangaloom Resort on Moreton Island:

Moreton Island is about 25 miles off the coast of Brisbane. It takes around an hour and 15 minutes to get there via the ferry. You can choose to stay at the resort, or do what we did and just go for the day. I booked us the Marine Discovery tour and added on the wild dolphin feeding experience. You can also check out their other day activities here. Our ferry departed at 10 am and we were back to the port in Brisbane by 7 pm.

The Marine Discovery Tour cost includes the ferry ride to and from Tangalooma, the marine life cruise itself once you hit the island, a $25 lunch voucher per adult, a $20 lunch voucher per child, one non-alcoholic drink per person, and access to the Tangalooma Resort. At the resort you can use their locker rooms to change and store your belongings and borrow beach towels. You can also swim in both of their pools, and of course eat in their bars and restaurants. There is a drink package you can purchase, but I didn’t. The total cost for my husband, two kids, and I was $767.60 once we added the wild dolphin feedings. But I assure you it was worth every penny!

What to do once you arrive at Moreton Island:

Once we got to the island, we were given a quick tour of the resort and their amenities by one of the employees. Then we only had about a half an hour to kill before getting on the actual marine life cruise. So, we used some of our lunch vouchers and grabbed the kids some snacks, and hopped onto our catamaran. Hot Tip: If you do not use your entire voucher, you are shit outta luck on getting change back. I learned the hard way when I bought us four bags of snack-sized potato chips, gave the guy our $25 voucher and didn’t receive any change back. So spend wisely!

The marine life cruise lasts about two hours. The huge appeal to us and the reason we took it was so we could see dugongs in the wild. (If you don’t know what dugongs are, they are basically like manatees.) Moreton Island has a resident dugong named Dougie who likes to come right by the catamarans and say hi. We hadn’t even been on the water for 15 minutes when the captain spotted Dougie!

After we hung out with Dougie for a bit, we moved along to check out some ship wrecks. They were intentionally wrecked to create a barrier for coral to grow on. You can snorkel or scuba dive here if you don’t see it by boat. We had a couple on our boat who had snorkeled right before our cruise. They said the water was cold but beautiful and they saw a ton of sea turtles. On our marine life cruise, we ended up seeing a lot of sea turtles ourselves! The crew also gave everyone pellets to feed to the fish, which our kids absolutely loved.

Tangalooma Resort Amenities on Moreton Island:

Once your done with your marine life cruise, (or snorkeling, beach-sitting, etc.) you can grab lunch and hang out by one of the two pools. I will forewarn you, I thought the photos of the pools at Tangalooma Resort definitely oversold them. That being said, my 6 and 9 year old girls aren’t picky on where they get to swim, so off we went. After they realized the pool water wasn’t any warmer than the ocean water though, we headed back to the beach.

We had about three hours to kill between our marine life cruise and our wild dolphin feeding. We didn’t bother showering when we were done, knowing we would be right back in the ocean to feed dolphins that night. But, there are showers on site if you need them. The other bonus is they have unlimited coffee and tea in the lounge where the locker rooms are. We visited a few times to refill our coffees and teas throughout the day! After hanging out on the beach, we headed into the main restaurant for dinner and drinks.

Wild Dolphin Feeding at Moreton Island:

As soon as the sun begins to set, there is a pod of about 13 wild dolphins that come into shore. The guides there will have everyone line up in multiple lines. Then, you go one at a time, (or two at a time if you have a young kid). They have you rinse your hands, then they give you a fish to feed the dolphin. You have to hold it up high as you enter the water and then the guide tells you when you can feed it to the dolphin. They give you a quick opportunity to snap a photo, but they don’t take them for you.

Since you’re knee-deep in ocean water with fishy hands, it can become a challenge to take a quick pic! But I was able to snap a couple photos of my 9 year old. Then, when my husband went out with our 6 year old, I got plenty of photos of them from the beach. The dolphin feeding was by far one of the highlights of our entire trip. You can read more info about it here too on their website.

To check out what else we did in Australia, I have blogs about Sydney here, here, and here! This blog is installation one of many of our time in Brisbane, so stay tuned for more! None of these posts are sponsored in any way. I just love to share all of our traveling tips and tricks hoping it’ll help someone out with their planning. Thanks for reading!