MORETON ISLAND

island lying across Moreton Bay from Brisbane, off the southeast coast of Queensland, Australia. It is about 25 miles (40 km) long by 5 miles (8 km) wide and has an area of 66 square miles (171 square km). The island's sand dunes, originally wind-formed but now fixed by vegetation, may be the world's loftiest, rising to 912 feet (278 m) at Mount Tempest. In 1770 Captain James Cook, the British navigator, visited the island, which he thought to be a peninsula, and named its northwest extremity Cape Moreton. The British navigator who surveyed the entire coast of Australia, Matthew Flinders, determined its insular characteristics in 1799. Site of the state's first lighthouse in 1857, Moreton also had a short-lived whaling station at Tangalooma in 1952. A ferry links the island to Brisbane. Pop. (1981) 549.