Fraser, the island’s a beach!

Imagine the archetypal desert island with a palm tree in the middle surrounded by sand and sea, then times it by a million; then you get somewhere close to Fraser Island or K’gari (pronounced Gurrie) as the Butchulla indigenous people called it; which means paradise. I think we should have kept the original name in this case instead of naming it after the first white people to get marooned here that were looked after by those people until delivered back to other white people. All the indigenous people are dead now and there are only about 150 Dingoes left which are the wolves that they domesticated so they look very similar to our domesticated dogs. We would have been lucky to see one on an island this big; needle in a haystack.

Paradise (Fraser) is a huge sand island, the biggest in the world and 3 times larger than Malta. Its sand is silicon based, beautifully white and squeaks under foot, lovely to walk on. The entire rain forest is growing out of this sand and gets quite high in places over 200 meters so any rain falling gets soaked up and filtered like a big sponge. Amazingly there are over 100 fresh water lakes on the island which are crystal clear with white sands all around them amongst the bush. Likewise, the many creeks contain some of the purest water on earth. It is estimated that there is 30 times more water contained in the huge underground aquifer than is contained in the whole of Sydney harbour and we now know how big Sydney Harbour is, especially when its raining.

We were picked up last from our hostel and headed straight off to river heads where we caught the ferry and crossed over in about 30 minutes. We got on our 40 seater 4x4 bus and headed through the bush 15 km to the other side of the island with a beach that stretches 75 miles along the east side. We had excellent commentary from our crazy driver Ray that somehow managed to overtake or intimidate into stopping every other 4x4 that we came across. I’m so glad we took the bus rather than a self drive it’s quite rough and narrow. We drove along the beach for about 30 minutes to Eli Creek where we had our first stop. The beach is actually classed as a highway and has a maximum speed limit of 80kmph but who’s watching? We did see police cars and officers so I’m glad that I wasn’t driving. Next stop the Pinnacles where there are sand formations of many different colours. The colours come from different minerals that were being mined before it was stopped so there’s not so much left. I got a nice photo of Claire standing on top of one of the posts and before long everyone was doing the same.

From there we headed off to an old wreck called Maheno which was built in Scotland in 1905 and became a wreck in 1935. Only a small portion of it is visible now as most has rusted away, sunk in the sand or stolen. The first shot shows the front and the last shows the rear with quite a lot either under sand or gone.

There is a small village that was built in the 1970’s with a few shops and a bar restaurant where we had lunch and saw the parrots in the trees. Lunch was included where there was a nice salad selection but the hot food wasn’t as good so stick to the first half. Fed and watered we headed of to Central station where the loggers used to live, for a walk through the rain forest for about 35 minutes where we saw the Skink and Tarzan swinging through the trees. He was actually on his honeymoon and his new bride Jane was pleased that he didn’t embarrassed himself. She took a trip on an aeroplane from Eli Creek to the Pinnacles where we picked her up again so she didn’t miss much. The flights are $70 each for a quick trip of about 15 minutes but you see lots of the island lakes that are otherwise inaccessible by car. Sometimes you will see sharks and sting rays but not on our trip.

Last stop McKenzie Lake and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, so you have lots of photos of it, if I can ever find a decent internet connection. We had 90 minutes there because our driver Ray got there first, he should try rallying. The water is so clear and they say that it’s one of the safest places to go for a swim in Australia with only small fish and turtles living there. The water is so pure your hair feels really clean and fluffy when it dries. What a great way to finish of a great day; everyone should come here once. Thank you everyone for talking us into coming here as we so nearly didn’t. Just to finish the day off perfectly, again we were dropped off first at our youth hostel, good job I brought my student card.