Just 50km east of Brisbane is Stradbroke Island, home to whale watchers and wedding parties, writes Neville Peat.
Small piles of champagne ice, tipped on the grass from buckets, tell of a wedding celebration not long over.
Picture a cliff-top beside a cerulean sea, pandanus trees droopy-leaved and motionless, balmy air filled with frangipani scent and the happy couple exchanging vows under a backdrop of a white lace in front of guests gathered on rows of white folding chairs.
Below this scene is an arc of squeaky sand and beyond the beach humpback whales are enjoying the sun-filled day too, spouting and breaching, perhaps leaping for joy as they migrate north to breeding grounds in tropical seas.
There could be four such weddings in a weekend at this spot - about 120 a year - such is the nuptial popularity of the little town of Point Lookout on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. It's hard to believe Point Lookout is just 50km west of the Brisbane CBD.
To get here from central Brisbane, you drive an hour to the port of Cleveland and take a 25-minute fast ferry across Moreton Bay to Dunwich on North Stradbroke, then a leisurely bus ride of another 25 minutes to Point Lookout on the northeast side of the island.
You have arrived in a setting reminiscent of a South Seas coral island that holds three small, blissfully quiet seaside villages decorated with golden palms, pawpaw and pandanus.
Except this island is not built of coral but sand - a great expanse of sand, 40km long and 10km wide, some of which might have been deposited here after drifting in currents from as far away as the Antarctic over a few million years.
Familiarly known as Straddie, the island is a physical and cultural world apart from the conurbation that is Brisbane.
Specialising in weddings and whales, Point Lookout, population 700, is the pick of the island's three villages.
Its rocky headlands overlooking the southern reaches of the Coral Sea are the point of difference, featuring two tidal gorges where sometimes you see dolphins romping and turtles and eagle rays cruising.
In August 2010, a humpback whale calf was born just off North Gorge.
A shaded wooden walkway snakes around the sea-pounded gorges, offering a kaleidoscope of views of this dramatic interface between sea and land.
It takes about 20 minutes to walk the short loop.
From late May to July, the humpback whales parade past Point Lookout on their annual migration from Antarctic waters to the tropics, and return between August and October with calves in tow.
A daily survey of the northbound migrants this year counted 4515.
The counters sit on a viewing platform high above Frenchmans Bay, watching for spouts, breaches and dark dorsal fins breaking the surface.
The traffic is steady.
Even on the last day of the survey, with numbers declining, the counters recorded 114 over six hours, a rate just under 20 an hour.
Point Lookout is one of the best places to watch whales from land.
Some residents are enthused enough to have erected mini-grandstands in their front yards for watching whales.
Point Lookout's headlands and low hills were formed by an ancient rhyolite volcano, whose hard fine-grained rocks have a pinkish hue.
Sand transported by currents slowly accumulated around the volcano over a long period, extending southwards.
Straddie's sand has commercial value for its mineral content, mainly silica, titanium and zircon.
The sand-mining industry, Belgian-owned now, has long been an economic driver here but the mining leases will expire in 2019.
Except for the three townships and national park land, the bulk of the island is now in Aboriginal title, a far cry from the colonial past, when Queensland Aboriginals were denied land rights.
Tourism is increasingly important to sustain the villages and jobs in the hospitality industry.
Through an agreement with the local authority, Redlands City Council, the Aboriginal people now operate the island's beach camps for visitors wanting cabins or tent sites.
At Dunwich, the island's Aboriginal history is explained through exhibits at the museum, and along the road is an Aboriginal arts centre featuring paintings that reflect the natural environment of Minjerribah, the island's Aboriginal name, through contemporary and traditional artforms.
Aboriginals make up about a quarter of the island's population of 2500, which swells to about 30,000 during the summer holiday peak.
Cultural highlights include the annual Qandamooka festival of the arts, with song, dance and graphic arts, and a chamber music festival now in its ninth year.
One of the largest employers in Dunwich is a University of Queensland marine research station, a smart, modern and picturesque facility close to the ferry terminal.
It attracts scientists from many parts of the world.
Cafes at all three villages offer plenty of choice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
At Dunwich is the Island Fruit Barn, which serves wholesome local produce and doubles as a garden shop and plant nursery.
Amity's Seashells Cafe specialises in fish dishes with tables outdoors on a large covered deck, a very South Pacific look.
Birdlife includes honeyeaters, butcher birds, wattle birds, crested pigeons and Torresian crows.
Among the marsupials are whiptail wallabies with pretty faces, and eastern grey kangaroos, which are commonly seen from the headland walkway at Point Lookout.
Koalas reside in the Point Lookout urban area, feeding on eucalyptus leaves. No dingoes live on the island.
It was named the Isle of Stradbroke in 1827 after the First Earl of Stradbroke, England, whose descendant, the sixth earl, opened the museum in 1988.
A concept hard to believe today, the construction of a bridge from the mainland to North Stradbroke for sand mining and tourism interests was mooted in the 1980s, with two spans totalling about 7km and using Peel Island as a stepping stone.
The Queensland government, fielding howls of protest, soon decided it was not justified.
A bridge connecting with the mainland is patently non-essential.
But the newish wooden walkway with soaring stairways at Point Lookout's Headland Park is an outstanding visitor facility.
If you carry on from there you will come to three creamy-sand beaches in quick succession: Frenchmans, Deadmans and Cylinder.
Between Frenchmans and Deadmans you pass the viewing platform where the official whale counting occurs, and 10 minutes further on you emerge into the park that hosts wedding parties.
You might even happen upon one: an arch of white lace, white chairs, white-crested waves whipped up by tropical tradewinds, and a flock of rainbow lorikeets dashing overhead.
Maritime disasters
In the early hours of May 14, 1943, several Point Lookout residents reported hearing an explosion and seeing a glow in the sky off the southern tip of Moreton Island, north of North Stradbroke.
What they heard and saw that night was almost certainly the sinking of the Australian World War 2 hospital ship Centaur, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
Large red crosses on a white hull identified its role.
Having sailed north from Sydney for Pacific theatres of war, Centaur had no patients on board. But of 332 nurses, doctors and crew, 268 were lost. Only 64 survived.
During the war, Japanese submarines sank scores of vessels off the Australian coast but Centaur's loss was one of the worst wartime disasters.
In the 19th century, Dunwich was the scene of a tragedy involving the British ship Emigrant, which was carrying Irish and English settlers to Queensland in 1850.
During the voyage a typhus epidemic hit the ship.
Eighteen passengers and crew died at sea and another 28 succumbed after the ship had berthed at Dunwich.
Their crosses are set out in stark lines in Dunwich Cemetery, close to the fast-ferry terminal.
Cook Memorial
After mapping the New Zealand mainland aboard Endeavour on his first voyage to the South Pacific, Lieutenant James Cook crossed the Tasman Sea and named Point Lookout on May 17, 1770.
His mapping of the east coast of Australia took several months.
Although he did not land here, there is a plaque commemorating his sail-past on a stone seat overlooking the sea.
The seat marked the 200th anniversary of the Cook voyage in 1970.
● Dunedin writer Neville Peat is the author of The Tasman - Biography of an Ocean (Penguin 2010).
