Best time for the quad ride, and the Moreton whale watching months

You can ride the quads in any month: the resort runs the tour every day.⁴ What changes is comfort. On the resort's own figures, average air temperatures on the island run from about 20 degrees in July and August to 29 in January and February.² The water follows the same curve, from 21 degrees in July and August to 26 in January and February.⁶

For the ride itself, we would pick the dry, mild stretch from August to November. At the Cape Moreton Lighthouse weather station, September has the least rain of the year, 37 mm on average, and rain of 2.5 mm or more falls on just 3 days.¹ August is close behind, with 50 mm and 4 such days.¹ By November the average daily high has climbed to 25.5 °C, warm but not yet steamy.¹

A word on that station. It stands at the lighthouse on the rocky northern headland, 19.1 km away from where you ride and well above the sea, so it reads a little cooler and windier than the bay side where you ride.¹ Treat its numbers as the island's pattern, not the exact weather on the tracks. The chart and table below give the whole year month by month.

Rain is not always bad news on a sand island, and riders who skip a damp day may miss the best tracks of the week. According to the Quandamooka guide to Moreton Island, dry sand makes the inland tracks worse, rain usually improves them, and a dry spell means a slow, bumpy trip.⁵ Damp sand packs firm under the wheels; bone-dry sand is soft and churned.

So the day after a shower can be the best ride of the week, as long as the storm itself has passed. Heavy rain is a different matter: the resort says all its tours depend on the weather, and on the sister activity, the dune safari, tobogganing cannot run at all in wet conditions.^17,18 Expect a pause rather than a soaking.

The beach has its own timetable. The Easy Rider beach tour is timed by the daily tides and can only be booked up to 2 weeks ahead.¹³ Drivers are told to keep off the beach for two hours each side of high tide, and the resort's tides come up to 40mins before those at the Brisbane Bar.^19,20 For the beach ride, the tide matters more than the month.

Cruise ship days change the rhythm of the resort, and passengers who arrive by ship book their activities through the ship, not the island desk.²⁴ The resort points guests to its What's On Guide for current tour details, so check it before you choose a date.²⁵ Brisbane school holidays and long weekends also fill the boats, and in those weeks it pays to book well ahead and to fix your ride slot early.

The ride can also be called off. The resort may alter, postpone or cancel any tour on safety, operational or environmental grounds, with nothing refunded when safety is the reason.¹² A thunderstorm over the tracks is the obvious case, and the reason an early slot is worth having: it leaves later slots to move into.

Book with the cutoff in mind: on our listing a cancellation made 2 days or more ahead is refunded in full, so read the forecast early. Booked straight with the resort, its day cruises cannot be changed or refunded once you are inside 48 hours of the boat.²⁶ That difference is a good reason to book through a listing with a free cancellation window when the forecast is uncertain, as it often is in the summer storm season.