There was a township called
Moondarewa located on the southern tip of
Stradbroke Island (now
South Stradbroke Island). On 9 February 1881 the
Queensland Government auctioned 156 town lots at Moondarewa which was described as "southern end of Stradbroke Island and opposite Southport" (. The name
Moondarewa is a corruption of the Aboriginal name
Moonjerrabah which was the name for a mosquito. Moondarewa was located in the area near where
Seaworld is located today (). The Spit was formed between 1897 and 1898, a product of
longshore drift when high seas broke through at Jumpinpin (), a narrow section of land on Stradbroke Island. This made a new ocean passage, the
Jumpinpin Channel, which divided Stradbroke Island in two (
North Stradbroke Island and
South Stradbroke Island). The continuous longshore drift it created continued to erode South Stradbroke Island and the township of Moondarewa began to be lost to the sea from the late 1930s during storms as the Broadwater Entrance migrated northwards. During the 1940s the Southport Yacht Club grew and added marina facilities for the increasing number of private boats wanting to moor on the Spits' eastern side of the Broadwater. Since the 1950s and '60s, the local prawning industry used The Spit for their berth. The Spit continued to develop, with tourist attractions opening in the 1960s. It is now home to
Sea World theme park, an upmarket shopping restaurant and bar precinct and several resorts. Navigational difficulties caused boating accidents, prompting the planning and design of the
Gold Coast Seaway, built from 1984 to 1986. The design relied on data from the Beach Protection Authority to prevent it becoming a
baymouth bar connecting to
South Stradbroke Island. Construction of the project had six main phases: • retaining walls using approximately one million tonnes of imported rock •
dredging 4.5 million cubic metres sand At at October 2024, the work is still in progress. ==Attractions==