Gold to Sunshine Coast Coast Australia

Coast is on its biggest expedition ever.

I've come to Australia - a mighty island with a living coastline

so dramatic it can overwhelm the senses.

The vivid colours, the scents

and sounds, the textures of Australia's coast evoke

powerful emotions and create deep memories in those who come here.

This is a place where we can touch the past and hear a nation's

heartbeat in the tales of those who live here.

We're off to the beach, but not just any beach. We're exploring

two of the most iconic and treasured resort coastlines in the world -

Australia's glistening Gold Coast

and its northerly neighbour, the Sunshine Coast.

They share such simple names, yet they evoke

rays of sunshine into any tiring mind.

You could just call them the holiday coasts.

And bisecting them, the richly diverse Moreton Bay,

where we stop off along the way.

To appreciate the scale of our journey, it's best to scale

great heights.

The perfect start to the day.

Isn't it wonderful up here?

The air's clearer, the light's brighter, the colours are sharper.

But the apparent gloss of this coastline conceals many

intriguing histories and a challenging future.

At first sight, you might say it's all bikini-clad meter maids

catching the next big wave and chilling out on the promenade.

But on our journey, we're stepping behind this facade

and discovering that these holiday meccas are much, much more.

First, anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett reveals that the

region had a key role in protecting the nation in World War II...

This fort could have been the front line in the Pacific War.

..palaeontologist Professor Tim Flannery explores

Fraser Island, a world-famous sanctuary.

But is it edible?

It's like tasting history, really.

Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston finds that to save

the dugong, you have to catch one first.

What we're looking for is when they pop up

and their nose pops out of the water.

Brendan Moar investigates how rips work and the dangers they present...

OK, Brendan. We're going to put you in the guts of the rip.

I feel like a long way from the beach now.

This is a strange and unsettling place.

And I uncover the tragic past behind an outpost for outcasts.

This is Coast Australia.

This time, our trip covers a coastline that

runs from the iconic Surfers Paradise through Moreton Bay,

past Noosa on the Sunshine Coast and up to Fraser Island in the north.

This is the Gold Coast,

where the mighty Pacific meets the most densely populated

coastal community on the Continent. And you don't have to look

too closely at the coastline to see that the name fits -

golden sands,

plenty of sunshine

and a certain razzle-dazzle glitz to kick off our journey.

First up, Miriam Corowa examines the roots of Surfers Paradise

and its link to a modern American city.

The foundations for Surfers Paradise were laid in 1933.

That's when hotelier and entrepreneur Jim Cavill

pushed to have a sleepy town called Elston renamed.

Two hotly contested names were suggested - Sea Glint

or Surfers Paradise, which was also the name of Jim's pub.

Jim lobbied hard for Surfers Paradise and won the vote -

a marketing masterstroke in hindsight and great for his business.

By the '50s, the town had rapidly transformed itself into a hip

beach destination.

Subsequent development was driven by an easing of building

regulations and the post-World War II economic boom.

You won't go short on souvenirs.

And as for cheery postcards, they're marvellous!

They're making the folks back home feel terrible!

Australia was flush and investors loved it here,

dubbing the region the Gold Coast - not for the colour of its sand

but for its money-making opportunities.

Of course, there was only a finite amount of waterfront.

But for the property developers, the solution was simple.

It was the construction of massive canals that opened up modern

Surfers Paradise to a real estate boom in the '50s and '60s.

'I'm meeting a man who played a key role in the creation of this

'waterfront wonderland.

'Jock McIlwain is an engineer, former developer and entrepreneur.

'He arrived in Surfers Paradise in 1959 and found

'himself in a spot perfect for building canals.'

The geology and the geography of the place

was ideal for canal developments.

The tidal movement was only less than two metres and that

meant that beaches could be provided in front of waterfronts.

What were those first canals like?

The early canals were put in in isolated positions

and they were too narrow.

The waters didn't move in and out freely during the tidal movement.

They tended to become stagnant and people didn't like that very much.

You get kind of a smell.

I went to Miami and learnt all about canals in the early '60s

and I found that the main thing was to

concentrate on widening the canals and to give them aeration

so that the water quality remained very high.

And I did experiments on this development here.

I put dyes in and I showed that we had to have seven tidal movements

here before the water had changed completely, 100%.

'Following this breakthrough, the residents flowed in after

'the water started flowing both in and out.

'And that's how Surfers Paradise found

'another 400km of coastline and converted itself into a mini

'Miami, with all the glamorous trimmings.'

Almost everything in Surfers Paradise is connected to the sea.

It's a glittering stereotype of Australians at play

but the sea represents danger,

especially the unpredictable rips that often claim lives.

Brendan Moar is lending his body to science to help solve

the riddle of the rips.

-Brendan, how are you, mate?

-Very good. How are you?

-Good.

In Surfers Paradise, water safety and life-saving have a long history.

While shark attacks grab the biggest headlines in Queensland,

the greatest risk to unsuspecting swimmers are the invisible

clutches of the ocean herself - rips.

I started young.

'I'm meeting Warren Young, the Gold Coast's chief lifeguard -

'a man with a lot of lives to watch over.'

Patrolling beaches in rips, you've got to be on the ball.

You've got to pick the right bank

and then you've got to keep the people

secure by constant surveillance and moving in and out with them.

You know, taking a board out the back

and just sitting in front of them, see how they're going, you know.

It's so many things.

'Testing the waters here today is a world expert on the subject.

'He's Dr Rob Brander, better known as Dr Rip.'

-G'day, Rob.

-Hey, Brendan. How you going?

-Doing good. How are you?

-Yeah, good, thanks.

-It's turned into a beautiful day.

Yeah, it's beautiful. The only problem is we've got a beach with

lots of rips on it at the moment.

And if you look at the beach right now, if you want to spot a rip,

there's waves breaking everywhere - waves breaking, shallow water.

You get a lot of white water.

You get white down there, but right here in front of us,

see this dark gap? It's about 30-40 metres wide?

Well, that's what we call a rip current

because it's deeper water, waves don't break as much there.

All that water's coming in with the breaking waves

and it's going back out through that rip.

Using GPS measurements on swimmers, Rob has discovered

crucial information about the way rips behave.

We're finding, on most beaches, that 80% of the time, rips do

recirculate and maybe you should just stay afloat

and relax because there's an 80% chance that you'll be taken

within minutes back into shallow water.

All right, so you hold that.

'It seems a promising theory, so I've offered to put my body on the

'line to test it out in this rip and learn how best to escape it.

'A chest monitor will measure my heart rate.

'To track my position, Rob's put a GPS on my head.'

I imagine this looks really, really good, doesn't it?

OK, Brendan, we're going to put you in the guts of the rip.

You're going to walk out to about waist-deep water,

head out a little bit in the rip

and then you're going to do three things -

first, you're going to swim parallel to the beach, heading that way,

and then when you've finished doing that, come back

and swim parallel to the beach going that way.

And then the third time you go in,

you're just going to stay afloat, relax,

and see where the rip takes you.

-You ready?

-Wish me luck.

-Good luck. You'll be fine.

'To swim to the left, I have to say, isn't too bad.

'But going the other way is very hard work.'

-So what's the verdict?

-That was harder.

Yeah, I don't think you actually got out of the rip, so we're going to

go back in one more time

-and try one more action. This time, you're just going to float.

-OK.

-Back you go.

-Give me a moment to get my breath!

-No, just go!

'Initially, floating in the rip is fine, but after a few minutes,

'I'm not getting any closer to the beach.'

I feel like I'm a long way from the beach now.

'In fact, I'm actually heading further offshore.

'So in the interests of my personal safety,

'we decide to call in the jetski.'

Being stuck out there was freaky. That vehicle's awesome.

Yeah, OK. Well, good job.

Let's go look at the data and see what happened to you.

'The data tells us the first parallel swim with the current only

'lifted my heart rate a little. The second swim - a lot!

'But what about when I just floated?'

The third one was interesting

cos you just went out and you had to float

and, of course, we had the GPS on you

and we can see that you sort of went

slowly out and then the rip pulsed and took you much further out.

It was OK at first but then as I went further and further out,

you know, it just gets pretty freaky out there

and my mind starts to go a bit crazy. And yeah, it's not a good feeling.

And your heart rate goes up.

That's the whole story right here, is that, I mean, you can

tell people to swim parallel but it's like a coin flip -

which direction is going to be easy or hard? So it's not foolproof.

If you're floating, well, that's great. If you float

and you end up out of the rip really fast - great,

but if you're taken out, you're still going to get nervous.

So there's no ultimate answer.

Like the sea itself, rips are unpredictable,

and Rob reckons the best advice is simple - swim between the flags.

From Surfers Paradise, we travel north to Bribie Island

at the top end of Moreton Bay.

Separated from the mainland by the narrow ribbon that is

Pumicestone Passage, Bribie Island is a haven for wildlife

and holidaymakers.

But it's also home to an historic military

compound that was designed to play a crucial role in World War II.

To uncover more, Dr Xanthe Mallet's hitting the beach.

Today, you can freely drive along the sands of Bribie Island.

But back in 1942, civilians were barred from this beach,

with good reason.

Over 70 years ago, World War II was being fought on Australia's doorstep.

Darwin had been bombed, and with the Japanese assault in the

Pacific in full swing, the threat of invasion by Japan was real indeed.

A naval assault from the north would come right past these shores,

so I've come to discover how Australia planned to repel an attack.

Well, I'm only allowed to go

so far in one of these. The rest of the way, I'm on foot.

'I'm looking for a fort at the north end of the beach.

'I've arranged to meet historian Richard Walding to find out

'why this point on the Australian map is so important.'

He's spent years studying the fort and its role in the War.

This was strategically very significant for the Pacific War.

It was to protect the US submarine base, which was in Brisbane,

and that was one of the biggest US submarine

bases in the world at the time.

For about eight months, it was the biggest.

They had something like 74 submarines on patrol over

that period.

Had the Battle of the Coral Sea not gone the way it did

and Japan did better in the Battle, this could have been the front line.

This fort could have been the front line in the Pacific War.

Adding to the tension were stories of what became known as

the Brisbane Line.

There's a thing called the Brisbane Line that is rumoured to be

a line, north of which they were prepared to abandon,

if the Japanese came further south.

Everything, what,

north of this, would have been just sacked off as collateral damage?

It would have, yeah.

So this was the last bastion for the Pacific War

if the Japanese came further south.

But what was it like for the men who were posted here,

living in the shadow of a Japanese strike?

Former digger, 92-year-old Tommy Dorrett, knows first-hand.

He was 18 when he was conscripted and sent to Bribie Island.

We've got some names on here. Are you actually listed on here?

Yeah, I got... On the top left-hand side.

Tom Dorrett.

So all these guys did serve here with you?

All served here with me. Yeah, the whole lot of them, yeah.

I'm the only one that's still up and travelling.

Did you stay friends with them after the War?

Right up until they were finished.

-Did you?

-We were always on the phone.

Really?

OK, let's go.

All right. After you, Sir.

Be the first time I was called Sir on a gun.

'Tommy's job was to man one of the fort's two gun batteries.'

That's the old roster board in there.

-So your name would have been on that?

-My name would have been there

and that's the position you would have taken on the gun.

How long were the shifts?

Five hours.

The relief crew would be sleeping in this room in here

and you would swap on.

And they would come down and take your bed and you'd go up there

and they'd take your place up there.

-After you.

-Age before beauty!

This is where the guns would have been?

That's where the barrel come out there.

The shooting end, if it's come out there.

It could traverse from that side to that side.

-All the way round, 180 degrees?

-All the way around, 180 degrees.

So that would have covered the whole bay, then, wouldn't it?

Up and down, yeah.

Only weeks after Tommy was transferred to the fort,

the hospital ship Centaur was torpedoed by a Japanese

submarine about 60km east of the island.

268 perished in a sinking that was condemned as a war crime.

We couldn't see it, of course.

-You could hear the thump.

-Could you?

Oh, my mate did. Sanderson was on duty.

He heard the boom.

Fear of the invasion must have been really high.

It puts you on your toes, that's for sure, because we knew

that there was a sub in the very close area. We were getting

this stand-to every day, every hour, until they knew it had gone.

It was scary stuff, yeah.

'The sinking of the Centaur made the prospect of seeing

'the Japanese fleet steaming across the horizon seem more likely

'than ever.'

But no attack came, and throughout the War,

the soldiers here waited for action. Occasionally, they made their own.

The orderly sergeant come up here one day

and said, "Get your rifles and the bayonets.

"We're going down to Caloundra end." And, of course, there was

a heap of mothers and children and that along the end of the Caloundra.

What, tourists on the beach?

From Caloundra, yeah.

And we had to shoo 'em all off.

THEY LAUGH

So the most action you saw was shooing the tourists off the beach?

That was the most action we got up until then, yeah.

In the end, Fort Bribie never fired a shot in anger, and in 1945,

after the War, it was abandoned.

I just hope this historically important piece of military

history that's been left to crumble away won't be forgotten.

The next step of our journey takes us

to the southern end of Moreton Bay.

Nestled between the mainland and North Stradbroke Island

is a spot that today looks like an idyllic holiday destination.

Back in the early 20th Century, it was a place with a sad,

almost inhuman purpose.

Moreton Bay was once infamous for the penal colony that operated here.

What's less well known is that there was a time when one of the

islands was the unhappy home to a different kind of exile altogether.

This is Peel Island - a place with a hidden but heartbreaking history.

Hi, Thom.

'I'm meeting historian Thom Blake to learn more.'

Who was living on Peel Island?

This was a home for lepers for quite a long time.

Yes, beginning in the early 20th Century.

Leprosy's something that I associate with the dim

and distant past, really.

I don't really think about it in the 19th Century.

It was,

but still was around very much, even in Queensland, in the 19th Century.

The first case was recorded in 1855, but most significantly,

in 1891, was the first white person,

and that really terrorised the whole community,

so much so that there was a special act called the Leprosy Act.

Leprosy is a bacterial infection that has terrified people

throughout history,

largely because they wrongly believed the disease was

highly contagious.

The Leprosy Act, passed in 1892, enabled the "removal and

"indefinite detention of any person suspected of having the disease".

Leprosy was far more prevalent in the non-white population.

That's what very much sort of exaggerated the fear in Queensland,

that somehow, the whites would get this terrible disease

from...from...from non-whites.

-Can you show me where the people lived?

-Let's go and have a look.

Now partly restored, the Peel Island leper colony, or lazaret,

was established in 1907 with 71 patients.

To save money, it was a multiracial facility,

and held both men and women.

The compounds were strictly segregated

and each patient lived in their own hut.

People lived in these huts.

Were they completely isolated here, or could members of the family come?

There were very strict rules about who could visit.

Family members could come, but the conditions were very onerous.

You couldn't touch, you couldn't kiss.

But of course, many families just often abandoned their members

who were lepers and they became outcasts and forgotten.

But remarkably, in a community

that had been virtually abandoned by society,

certain attitudes from the outside world still held sway here.

Although everyone here was suffering from the same affliction,

there was huge variation in the ways they were treated,

not least in terms of their accommodation.

These shacks, set far back from the shore,

were for the male non-white patients, as they were called.

Two years ago, traditional owner Joan Hendriks

saw them for the first time.

I had no idea until two years ago

that this was the conditions our people lived in.

It's just unbelievable.

How inhumane would anyone get?

It's very painful to even be here.

Things were so bad that in 1909,

28 non-white patients wrote to the home secretary

begging for decent housing.

"Since we have lived on this island, we are dying away fast.

"About 15 already have died here and only one white.

"We are not looked after as well as the whites.

"And us poor sufferers who suffer most

"cannot get what we ask for."

And I think those words tell a story.

Patient numbers at the lazaret peaked at 86.

But through its 52-year lifetime, many would die here.

There are around 200 graves in this graveyard.

Most of them unmarked, all of them unvisited.

They're a reminder that many of the people

sent to Peel Island never left.

In 1959, the lazaret was finally closed.

In 2007, it was designated as a national park.

This is a strange and unsettling place.

On the one hand, some of the buildings lend it

the air of an abandoned holiday camp.

But the story they have to tell is an overwhelmingly sad one.

It's about people who were misunderstood and mistreated.

And not only that. They were held captive, like criminals,

even though they'd committed no crime.

We're travelling up the coast and offshore now

to the northernmost point of our expedition,

Fraser Island.

A World Heritage site and the biggest sand island in the world.

On nine separate occasions covering millions of years,

the dunes here have overlapped and built up on each other

as ice ages came and went

and sea levels rose and fell.

Professor Tim Flannery has come here to unlock the riddle of its sands

and discover how it supports an incredible diversity of life.

I'm heading for one of the greatest natural wonders of the world,

Fraser Island.

And I'm really keen to learn how that pile of golden sand

has painted a rainbow all of its own.

This sand island is one of the world's oldest.

For at least a million years, sand from as far away as Sydney

has been making its way north up the East Coast.

And it all accumulates here.

The sand gathers here due to the bulge of Australia's East Coast.

Pushed up from the south, it can't take the lefthander

to cling to the shore beyond Fraser Island.

So that's the last place it stays by land before heading out to sea.

In the past, Fraser Island hasn't just proved a magnet for sand,

it's also attracted a variety of human enterprises

keen to exploit its natural resources.

From the 1860s until 1991,

there was extensive logging on the island.

While sand-mining operations ran from 1949 till 1976.

Now, I want to learn what that sand

can tell us about this island's incredible evolution,

so I'm meeting paleoclimatologist, Jamie Schulemeister.

Hello. Good day, Tim. Good to meet you. Welcome to Fraser Island.

You, too. Thank you very much.

Jamie has long studied the dunes here and what they can tell us.

Ah, I can see the coloured sands.

That is fantastic!

It's got the whole story recorded in the cliff.

This is the soil-forming process.

And the white layers are the bleached layers,

where all the nutrients have been ripped out of them.

And the orange and yellow layers are the layers underneath

in which all those nutrients have been taken into.

So, the rainwater's carrying the minerals

-and depositing them at different points?

-Absolutely.

The reddish sands are iron rich.

Yellows have more aluminium.

Blacks, manganese.

But depending on the nutrients the grains hold,

they're different sizes, too.

-This is the beach sand.

-Mm-hm.

Then this one here is the bleached sand on top

and this is the bright-red, iron-rich sand underneath.

And the best way to measure size isn't with your fingers.

So if you take a pinch of the sand and then place it in your mouth...

-Yeah?

-Mm!

I can feel the individual grains.

They're fairly coarse, it seems to me.

But my tongue tells me the sand stripped of nutrients is finer.

And as for the iron-rich grains...

It's got a creaminess about it,

but with that granularity, as well.

With those small grains that are still there,

but there's something else.

So what's happened there is

the small grains are the sand that was always down there

and that creaminess is all the minerals that have been washed down.

And they form little layers, little clay-type layers around the grains.

Yeah. It's like tasting history, really, in a sense, for me.

Remarkably, over time, the vegetation here

has found enough nutrients in the sand

not just to survive, but thrive.

As the heavens open on me, the sand itself is about to demonstrate

how it provides another key element for life.

Crystal-clear fresh water.

At least 80-million litres flows down this creek every day.

And after a century in the sand aquifer,

it's as clean and refreshing as any water I've ever tasted.

Fraser Island is essentially a massive sponge

that sucks in rainwater,

which gets filtered down into a huge porous reservoir,

estimated to be at least 17 times the size of Sydney Harbour.

It might stay there for 100 years

before it gets discharged into the sea.

But there's yet another reason

Fraser Island is an unspoilt paradise.

-Looking for a lift, mate?

-Salvation! John, how are you?

-Ah, not bad!

-What happened to sunny Queensland?

John Sinclair has spent a lifetime

fighting for the island's conservation.

Now, John, I understand that, you know, this island wouldn't quite be

what it is today without you and a few mates.

We've been successful in stopping sand mining

and for making it World Heritage listed,

which meant the end of the logging operations.

And so it's been an interesting 42 years for our organisation.

And the long battle has been well worth it.

There are now 870 species of flowering plants and ferns here.

Over 230 species of birds and 25 mammal species, including dingos.

It's got one of the greatest measured biomasses

of any area in the world.

It's produced what seems to be

incredible biodiversity from almost nothing.

From water, sand and sunlight.

-And wind.

-And wind, OK.

Wind is the driving force of it all.

-Really?

-Yes. If it wasn't for the wind, you wouldn't have the waves,

you wouldn't have the sand being transported up from the south

to create Fraser Island in the first place.

And it's the wind that brings the rain.

As I'm discovering, there's no shortage of rain here,

but there's also no shortage of beauty.

Which I guess proves you really can build a paradise

out of nothing but sand.

Our trip now takes us back to the tranquil waters of Moreton Bay.

I've come to the western shores of the bay

to learn how a prison within a prison

established up the Brisbane River,

laid the foundations for Australia's third largest city.

# One Sunday morning

# As I went walking...#

Folk singer and autoharp player, Evan Mathieson,

is passionate about songs that tell a story.

This one, Moreton Bay, recounts the tale

of one of Australia's most brutal penal settlements

and its cruellest commander, Captain Patrick Logan.

# I am a native of Erin's Island

# But banished now from my native shore...#

The Moreton Bay settlement was for convicts

who had reoffended once here in Australia.

Their crimes ranged from larceny to sex offences, to murder.

When Logan took up his command in 1826,

it was a struggling outpost of around 200.

But during his four years in charge,

he instigated an intensive programme of construction,

building up the settlement to become

a self-sufficient community of over 1,000.

Logan oversaw the construction of Queensland's

first permanent buildings,

in what would later become the city of Brisbane.

But it would be a city built on foundations of hardship.

Moreton Bay penal settlement was probably one of the harshest

and most brutal in the whole of Australia's penal history.

Particularly under Captain Logan.

In one of the years, he ordered 200 floggings of 11,000 lashes.

He instigated a treadmill up on the Tower Mill

and took the windmill blades off

and the prisoners used to spend hours just pumping water,

or whatever they used the power of the mill to do.

He was a very brutal man.

Logan was killed by Aborigines in 1830

while out on an expedition.

But he was destined never to be forgotten.

-Is there more of that song?

-Oh, yes, yes.

-Could you play it?

-Yes.

# For three long years I've been beastly treated

# And heavy irons on my legs, I wore

# My back, with flogging has been lacerated

# And oft times, painted with my crimson gore...#

I love it when history is preserved in song.

We're leaving Moreton Bay now

and heading up to the heart of the Sunshine Coast, Mooloolaba.

This town is home to a commercial fishing fleet

that catches more prawns than any other on the East Coast.

But as pressure mounts on the industry,

what sort of future does it face?

Brendan Moar has come in search of answers.

The local prawn industry's facing tough times.

In a nation of massive prawn consumers,

you really have to wonder why.

Is it overfishing, foreign fishing ports, the cost of capture?

To find out the answer, I'm joining the prawn trawler, Shebimie,

for a night on the high seas.

-Hey, Brendan!

-Good day, Bill.

-How are you?

-Very good. How are you?

-Good, mate. Welcome aboard.

-Thank you, sir.

-Let's go and catch some prawns.

-Fantastic.

Bill Hennebry has been fishing the waters off Mooloolaba for 38 years.

He's owned his own boat since 1988.

So, Bill what's the plan?

We're going to go out here to about 45 fathoms

and we're going to put the gear on the bottom

and see if we can catch some real nice king prawns.

In Queensland, trawling for prawns is an industry

that's grown from virtually nothing over the last 50 years.

It boomed through the '70s, '80s and into the mid '90s,

thanks largely to an export market driven by a low Australian dollar.

But the price fishermen receive for prawns has virtually halved

in real terms since 2001.

And about half the 40,000 tonnes of prawns

Australians will consume this year will be imported.

-Is it getting harder to make a living?

-Yes.

We're still getting 25-year-old prices.

But everything else has gone up.

Prawns are always taken at night.

And were aiming for a spot about 50 kilometres off the mainland.

-All right, are you ready?

-I'm ready!

-You ready?

-Yeah, I'm ready!

-Show us some excitement! Let's do it!

-I'm totally ready!

-Let's do it!

That's it. All the wire's out. We're now fishing.

But tonight, our test net

isn't exactly bursting with the bounty of the sea.

-One king prawn!

-There he is.

-That's the one. Not good enough.

That's the first time I've ever held a prawn that's still alive.

Watch where we go on there, Barry!

Adding to the pressure is the danger.

In the early '80s, fishermen were about 18 times more likely

to die on the job than the average Australian worker.

Safety has improved markedly, but the fatality rate

is still around nine times higher than the national average.

And in case you're wondering, Bill's deckhand, Barry, can't swim.

How is that for you, whenever you hear about another man lost?

It makes you look at what you're doing

and sometimes you feel like quitting

and going and finding something else to do,

but I guess we're just born to do this, so we go back to doing it.

You get over it.

Have a service for him.

Have a farewell and get on with it.

And a few hours later, all thoughts

have turned to just one thing, the catch.

-Now, that's a prawn!

-Now, that is a serious prawn.

-You can hang onto him.

-Righto. I'm...I could ride him to school.

Bill and Barry work with remarkable efficiency

getting the haul ready for market.

These are our mediums, our 10-20s.

Through the prawn washer.

So, is that a decent catch, Bill?

Well, it didn't work out too bad.

About 14 boxes there.

That's 150-odd pound.

70 kilos, sort of thing.

Not brilliant, but its all right.

At today's prices, this catch is worth around 1,000.

You've got two men out here.

That's right. And the overheads, you know... It's not enough.

We've fallen a little short of it being a successful trip.

But I've seen enough to get a small taste of the risks and realities

of being a fisherman.

I also realise that life on the sea

probably isn't the life for me.

Bill, too, is somewhat dubious about my skills as a fisherman.

-Righto, I better hand you this back. Bill.

-I'm going to need that.

-You're going to need it.

-You're not going to.

-No.

-LAUGHTER

-I don't think so.

-Good night, Barry.

-Nice to have met you, mate.

-You, too. See you later.

I'm just happy to be back on solid ground.

Follow the coastline north from Mooloolaba and soon you'll hit

one of Australia's most famous beaches, Noosa.

This is a mile-long sheltered crescent of sand,

where cosmopolitan sophistication

meets board shorts and thongs.

Around here, you're very likely

to bump into millionaires and movie stars.

And there are even those who've made the games of childhood

into a way of life.

Denis! How are you doing?

Hey! How are you?

You're a professional sand sculptor and you work on the beach.

-Where did it all go wrong?

-I used to be a photographer.

I was working, like, six to seven days a week.

And at that time, my eldest son was only three.

And so I was running out of the door, you know, front door,

carrying camera gear under each arm

and he sort of waved at me and said, "Bye, Dad."

And I went. I was choking back tears when I hopped into my car.

And I went back upstairs and I said, "What do you want to do?"

He said, "I want to go to Tea Tree Bay in the Noosa National Park

"and build things in sand."

From that promise to his son,

Denis has built not only these impressive sculptures

and scores more like them,

but a career that's taken him nine times around the world

in the last seven years.

And at what point did you realise

that this thing you were doing to entertain your little boy

was actually potentially a way of earning a living?

A French woman approached me and she said,

"Are you aware of the international circuit of sand sculptures?"

And I went, "What?!"

-Can such things be?

-Yes.

Right, I'm going to let you make the magic happen. All right.

Watching Denis work is to observe a unique demonstration of speed,

skill and artistry.

So, where'd you get the inspiration

for that particular arrangement of figures?

Well, I really love dolphins

and I swim with them occasionally.

And I'd love to be a mermaid so I wouldn't have to come up so often.

Right, Denis, I'm inspired.

No worries, mate.

-Inspired.

-See you.

I'm astonished how I'm forever finding people

who create unique careers on the coast.

Travel to the eastern boundary of Moreton Bay

and you'll find Moreton Island.

Its Aboriginal name, Moorgumpin, means, "place of sand hills."

And some of the dunes here reach up over 200 metres high.

This island is also the home of Queensland's first lighthouse.

Constructed using convict labour in 1857,

it was built in response

to the rising number of wrecks that occurred

as the shipping traffic into Moreton Bay and Brisbane increased.

But on the island's western shore, you can find proof

that not all shipwrecks are the result of wild weather,

bad luck or faulty seamanship.

Here at Tangalooma, these wrecks came about thanks to lobbying

by recreational boat owners wanting a safe anchorage.

The first was sunk in 1963

and now 15 former dredgers and barges not only provide shelter,

but an excellent artificial reef

for both divers and snorkelers.

We're leaving the shores of Moreton Island now

as our focus returns to the well-protected

and shallow waters of Moreton Bay.

Because the bay has an average depth of only seven metres,

sunlight can reach the seafloor here,

allowing a wide array of marine plants to grow.

That in turn supports a diverse range of wildlife,

including a species struggling to survive

our encroachment into its habitat.

Marine ecologist, Dr Emma Johnston, is on an expedition

to track down some of these creatures and discover

how a team of scientists collecting crucial scientific data

is trying to safeguard their future.

Do a bit of detective work on the mudflats of Moreton Bay

and there are clues to be found about the presence

of a curious local inhabitant.

This is sea grass.

The preferred diet of the sea cow, or dugong.

The majority of this internationally-endangered species

are now found off the coast of northern Australia,

but there are only about 1,000 left in these waters.

And today, I'm going on a dugong hunt.

Janet!

Marine biologist, Janet Lanyon, and her team

are carrying out work vital to protecting the dugong population.

And these hunts are critical to their studies.

Get some samples.

Yes, and we need to go now, while the tide's right.

We're looking for a large grey sea mammal

that can grow up to three-metres long and 500 kilograms in weight.

Dugongs only hold their breath for a couple of minutes

and they're out there feeding now.

So what we're looking for is when they pop up

and their nose pops out of the water.

Historically, and still today,

dugongs have strong social and cultural significance

for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders living in coastal regions.

But in the mid 1800s, it was the non-indigenous hunters

that truly decimated their numbers.

Dugong blubber was a prized commodity.

It was used to treat a variety of ailments,

including lung disease and rheumatism.

And as this ad shows, it was even sold as a cure for baldness.

Today, apart from hunting by traditional owners,

dugongs are fully protected.

He turns right at the last minute.

And we're finally onto one.

-Down there!

-Coming!

There he is!

To the dugong, this probably feels like an alien abduction.

But it soon settles.

Catches are strictly limited to five minutes

to minimise the animal's stress at all the attention.

The measuring and sampling is crucial to learn about factors

such as nutrition, reproduction

and to see how stable population numbers are.

Because they live in shallow waters, dugongs are under continuous attack

from human threats, such as propeller strikes,

pollution and fishing nets.

-Put your hand over it.

-All right? Ready? Release.

This was a female. A pretty big adult.

-About 265 centimetres.

-Uh-huh.

Really big tail. Very fat.

Probably within the range of pregnant female,

so we suspect that she might be.

We got skin samples for genetics

and she was an animal that we haven't captured in the past,

so she was a new animal. New one for our sample.

-And you got all that in five minutes?

-Yeah, that's right.

With her thrashing around!

A pregnant female is great news.

Because what makes the population especially vulnerable

is the dugong's slow reproductive rate.

A female may only have a few calves in her lifetime.

And every year, about 95% of the adult population

have to survive just to keep numbers stable.

As the tide turns, we're onto another one.

Since the programme started in 2001,

the team have carried out about 1,300 captures

on around 700 individuals.

Once the information gathered today

has been added and compared to an existing database of analysis,

it'll give researchers a more accurate assessment

of population numbers and behaviour patterns.

OK. Are you ready? Release.

Most importantly, they'll learn where these enigmatic creatures

are most vulnerable.

And how we can best manage their protection.

Now it's time for us to leave this Golden Coast,

after what, in many ways, has been a journey of contradictions.

But if there is one constant, it's the sand

that continues to sustain and enrich these shores.

I've visited more than a few historic castles

in my travels around the UK coast and beyond.

So far in Australia, I haven't encountered

any man-made structures of quite the antiquity I'm used to.

But because of the great age of the sand on this beach,

even a humble sandcastle becomes a historic building of sorts.

Next time, we travel to the southernmost point

of the Australian mainland, the Victorian Coast.

Dr Xanthe Mallett will be unravelling the mystery

behind a tragic shipwreck that marked the end of an era.

It's amazing that after so much time,

we can come down here and see it!

Brendan Moar finds out first-hand about the incredible risks it took

to build the world's biggest war memorial.

Ah, this is an incredible view! But it's kind of terrifying.

Professor Tim Flannery tracks down proof of the existence

of a truly massive predator.

-Come on!

-LAUGHTER

Look at that! Can you believe it?

Look, that is the tiniest find!

And I discover the crucial role

this lighthouse played in the birth of a nation.

This is known as a land full of light.

So what this is saying is, like,

"Hello, hello, this is Cape Otway. I'm here. You've arrived."