Great Keppel Island – The Keppels, Queensland

Where and How to Get There

Great Keppel Island is located a short 15km off the coast of Yeppoon. Services such as Freedom Fast Cat offer one way and return transfers to the island and back – expect a 30 minute ferry ride each way. Be aware that the boat docks on the beach, so you’ll be walking straight on to sand. It’s a 100-300m walk to the restaurants and most of the accommodation.

The island is one of 18 that make up the Keppel Islands. Allow a few days to explore all that the island has to offer.

What to Expect

17 Beaches, restaurants, camping, glamping, hiking, snorkelling, water sports, abandoned resort, lookouts, kayak tours, whale watching, scuba diving.

Where to Stay

You’ll have quite a few options of where to stay on Great Keppel Island – but none of them really like you typical Australian island resort. This island is a little more untouched and more budget friendly. To experience this island you’ll need to allow at least three days if you’re keen on hiking and snorkelling.

Here are some options on where you can stay.

Great Keppel Island Hideaway

You can book a beach cabin, basic room, A-Frame house or a Hideaway House here.

Great Keppel Island Hideaway accommodation is a back to basics, barefoot experience, offering an affordable Southern Great Barrier Reef holiday for everyone – singles, couples, families and groups. Enjoy a digital detox with no Wi-Fi in your room and no TV’s.

Great Keppel Island Holiday Village

Here you’ll find a style which suits the vibe of the island – operated by the island famous Geoff. You’ll have a choice of cabins and cottages, glamping tents and even the choice to set up a tent. The Holiday Village even offers free or discounted accommodation for those who put in a few hours work each day – not a bad deal! There’s also a little store, seating, fire pit, community kitchen and hire shop for all the guests. Book your accommodation here.

Keppel Lodge

Keppel Lodge is fully self-contained, private, spacious and comfortable accommodation. Rooms can be booked individually, or entire lodge can be booked exclusively (sleeping up to 17 people). You can book here.

Keppel Lodge is located on the esplanade on Fishermans Beach. It features four motel style rooms, each with their own ensuite bathroom, that all open up into a central spacious living area. At the front of the lodge, sliding doors open up onto a furnished deck with views through the palm trees to the beach and outdoor area.

The Lodge is located centrally to other island facilities, and is about a 5 minute walk to the Keppel Haven Bar / Bistro, Rainbow Hut, Island Pizza, Keppel Island Dive Centre and Watersports.

Air Bnb

It’s also worth a search on Air Bnb, as sometimes you’ll find beach houses for rent. Having the entire place to yourself or your group would be pretty incredible.

Ultimate Aussie Bucketlist Experience

This was an unexpected gem for sure! It’s definitely not your typical island getaway, so don’t expect any fancy resorts or infinity edge pools.

As we headed toward the coast from Carnarvon Gorge and Blackdown Tabelands, we did a last minute booking on the Freedom Fast Cat from Rosslyn Bay to Great Keppel Island – this was $90 for two people return.

Next we booked the last spot at Great Keppel Island Holiday Village in one of their ‘glamping’ tents. It was all a bit of a rush decision, but we ddin’t want to miss it. The owner there, Geoff, is a great guy and is clearly passionate about his business and the island in general. The other great thing about Geoff is that he’ll pick you up on the beach with his ute and take you and your gear to camp – easier than trudging through sand with everything!

Once settled in, the exploration began. It wasn’t until we inspected the map that we realised how large the island actually was – we were glad we had three days because there was a lot of hiking.

Day One

We always prefer catching the earliest ferry in to an island, and the latest one out so we feel like we aren’t as rushed and that we’re getting our money’s worth haha.

Once checked in, we grabbed our snorkelling gear and head down Fishermans Beach and started to snorkel from there to Shelving Beach. If you want to walk between these places, there is a track that connects these two, plus Monkey Beach, Monkey Point and Long Beach. You’ll definitely need a day to explore this and get some snorkelling done.

Monkey Beach was quite nice for snorkelling, but unless you’ve gone on a boat tour, expect to swim out 100m or so to reach the reef.

After a big first day, we headed back to our accommodation then enjoyed the sunset near the islands resturant.

Day Two

With an early breakfast and start to the day, we grabbed our hiking bags and headed off to explore the walking tracks – BUT – again we realised that the island would take a full days hike to get to the other parts and back. So we decided to get a lift on one of the tour boats (roughly $80) who then dropped us off at Butterfish Bay and Secret Cove. It was a bumpy boat ride, but we seen some turtles on the way – so pretty stoked!

We arrived at Butterfish Bay, snorkelled for a bit but then decided to take the walking track (a lot of sandy parts) to Wreck Beach -we had the entire beach to ourselves… probably for a good reason because after a five minutes of exploring it started raining really heavy! We had our hiking bags, camera and drone, so we put them in waterproof bags and tried to seek cover under a fall treee – it didn’t really help.

It kept on raining so we decided to start the hike back to Butterfish Bay, in the hopes of a tour boat coming by that could pick us up. Along the way we ran into a family of wild goats – the male was huge!

Luckily for us, the tour boat came by relatively soon and we got a ride back to the main beach. It was a pretty adventurous day so far, and despite being wet and cold, it was awesome.

That night we enjoyed a drink and something to eat at the restaurant, just as the cloud cover was starting to break up to allow a glimpse of the sunset.

In the picture below, you’ll see the remnants of an abandoned warehouse. It is in disrepair and can be dangerous to enter, so it is fenced off. You’ll see a part of the airport runway in the background.

Day Three

Our final day on the island had us getting some more hiking in to the lookouts and packing up. We left our bags at the accommodation until departure time, so we still had most of the day to explore.

After checking out the old resort we did the hike over to Mount Wyndham (175m) and took in the views one last time before heading back to the visitor centre.

As we weere waiting for the ferry to arrived, we decided to go and sit on the grassy area near the restaurant, and how lucky – two echidnas emerged from the long grass and were wandering about near us looking for food. We had seen an echidna on our way to Monkey Beach, but it was terrified and lodge itself under sticks and grass. These two that we were now watching were not too scared at all. It was an incredible way to finish off the trip!