We have had the best day ever today, it was just wonderful!! We had absolutely perfect weather all day with the sun shining throughout our time on the island. Couldn’t have chosen a better day. We had an early start to begin our adventure to Fraser Island. Needed to be at the barge landing at River Heads (10km away) by 7.45am for a 8.30am departure. This meant we had 45 mintues to kill while we waited. Can you believe there wasn’t anywhere to buy a coffee! A great opportunity for an enterprising person with a mobile coffee van. Certainly a captive market. The weather is looking promising so fingers crossed the forecasted clouds and rain don’t eventuate. Not too many cars going over but a couple of busloads of people of tour. The trip to the island takes 30 minutes. We disembarked at Wanggoolba Creek – love the name. The barge had a cat on board that obviously lives on the barge as there was kitty litter tray for it under the stairs but this didn’t stop it from ‘spraying’ on one of the crews backpack – he’ll get a nasty surprise. Nothing worse than cat pee! “Fraser Island is world heritage listed and comprising 184,000 hectares is the largest sand island in the world. It stretches 123 kms in length and 22 kms at its widest point. It is a place of exceptional beauty, with its long uninterrupted white beaches flanked by strikingly coloured sand cliffs, and over 100 freshwater lakes, some tea-coloured and others clear and blue all ringed by white sandy beaches. Ancient rainforests grow in sand along the banks of fast-flowing, crystal-clear creeks. Fraser Island is the only place in the world where tall rainforests are found growing on sand dunes at elevations of over 200 metres. The low "wallum" heaths on the island are of particular evolutionary and ecological significance, and provide magnificent wildflower displays in spring and summer. The immense sand blows and cliffs of coloured sands are part of the longest and most complete age sequence of coastal dune systems in the world and they are still evolving. They are a continuous record of climatic and sea level changes over the last 700 000 years. The highest dunes on the island reach up to 240 metres above sea level. The Great Sandy Strait, separating Fraser Island from the mainland, is listed by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention). The wetlands include: rare patterned ferns; mangrove colonies; sea-grass beds; and up to 40,000 migratory shorebirds. Rare, vulnerable or endangered species include dugongs, turtles, Illidge's ant-blue butterflies and eastern curlews”.
Onto the day. We arrived just after 9.00am and set off with a our tourist brochure map. Speed limit on the inland roads (sand tracks) was 30km/h and beach 80km/h. Easy to see why it is only 30km/h, our first adventure was through a deeply ridged mud track however it was not as bad as it looked. Some of the tracks were quite rough and it was not possible to do more than and speed limit. As you can only drive on the beach two hours either side of high tide and high tide has just occurred we decided to stay on the inland roads and visit the rainforest and then venture onto the beach. We were all surprised how deeply vegetated the island is and we soon came into rainforest. You would not imagine it could be so lush and beautiful. We stopped at Central Station where we did a short boardwalk through the rainforest - it was absolutely stunning. It is much prettier than some of the other rainforest walks we have done, hard to describe what made it different but there were lots of tall fern trees, beautiful healthy staghorns growing off trees, trees with bright green moss and pristine creeks with flowing water. There was so much bird life that we hadn’t heard in other forests. It really was jaw dropping beautiful. The forest reminded us of the rainforests further north Qld where it is more tropical and lush. We all loved it there. Whilst we had a map it was not detailed so a bit of calculated guesswork and navigation by Rob got us where we needed to be. Our next stop was Lake Birrabeen which is one of the largest and deepest freshwater lakes on the island. It is a popular swimming lake and the water is pristine and crystal clear. It is quite spectacular particularly against the soft white sand. We stopped here for morning tea, just gorgeous. “The lakes have very few nutrients and pH varies, though sunscreen and soaps are a problem as a form of pollution”. The freshwater lakes on Fraser Island are some of the cleanest lakes in the world. The beach sand of Lake McKenzie is nearly pure silica and it is possible to wash hair, teeth, jewelry, and exfoliate one's skin. Unfortunatley Lake McKenzie was closed to the public so we couldn’t see it but it is certainly one of the highlights of the island. From here we moved across to the beach and entered the beach via Eurong which is a beach resort with a small group of shops and accommodation. The beach is stunning and we are looking at the Pacific Ocean. The sand is very hard and makes for easy beach driving. Rob was the first one to spot a dingo which was a surprise as we didn’t think we would due to them being timid and shy. It was gorgeous, just ambling along the beach. Fraser Island dingoes are reputedly some of the last remaining pure dingoes in eastern Australia and to prevent cross breeding dogs are not allowed on the island. As of January 2008, the number of dingoes on the island was estimated to be 120 to 150, and sightings have become less common. We stopped at the Maheno wreck for lunch. The S.S. Maheno was originally built in 1905 in Scotland as a luxury passenger ship for trans-Tasman crossings. During the First World War the ship served as a hospital ship in the English Channel, before returning to a luxury liner. In 1935, the ship was declared outdated and on June 25, 1935 the ship was being towed from Melbourne when it was caught in a strong cyclone. A few days later, on July 9, 1935 she drifted ashore and was beached on Fraser Island. During the Second World War the Maheno served as target bombing practice for the RAAF and was used as an explosives demolition target by special forces from the Fraser Commando School. The ship has since become severely rusted, with almost three and a half storeys buried under the sand”. It is a very impressive wreck and sits sedately on the shoreline. Whilst we were beach driving we had a little light aircraft fly low over us and land on the beach behind us. Not something you see everyday. We think it was dropping passengers off but can’t be sure although we did see it a few more times along the beach parked near the highlights. We stopped at the Pinnacles which are structured coloured sands. Unexpected to see something quite like this on the beach! On the way back to the barge we stopped at Eli Creek which is the largest creek east of the island with a flow of 80 million litres per day. We walked on the boardwalk alongside the creek. The creek is crystal clear and is popular for floating. The idea being you enter the water at the top of the creek, lay on your back and float with the flow to the ocean. On a hot day it would be a lovely thing to do. There was someone in the water whilst we were there doing just that. We opted to walk it – it is fairly shallow. Surprisingly the water was not cold and we were tempted to put on our bathers and float. The creek is lined with lovely trees and ferns and it very very pretty. All too soon we had to move inland again and cross to the west of the island to catch the barge back to mainland. Not before seeing another two dingoes on the beach though. (One of them trotted to the car as we slowed to take photos which proved to us that people do feed them despite warnings not to. We saw one guy trying to get the dingo to lick his face while photographing it. Imagine what would happen to the dingo if it bit him! There are some very stupid tourists). We also saw three whales not far from shore (well close enough to see with the naked eye) and they were giving a fantastic display with their dorsal fins well out of the water. We watched them for a few minutes – wonderful to see. It is incredible how soon after leaving the beach you enter dense forests – we saw a lot of scribbly gum trees, bloodwoods and tallowwoods and heaps of other species of trees that we don’t know. Hearing the bird calls in the forest is wonderful. We caught the barge back to the mainland at a different spot to where we departed. We were leaving from Kingfisher Bay which is another beach resort. This one looked more speccy than Eurong and we reckoned you could spend all your time there and find heaps to do. There is a really nice day pavilion for day visitors where you can have a hot shower, swim in the pool, eat at the cafe and just relax in the forest surroundings, it was really well done. It took one hour to travel 20kms (east to west) which gives an indication of how rough and slow the sand tracks are. Unfortunately we didn’t see all that we wanted to see and and a day just isn’t long enough. You need to spend at least a few days there to really enjoy it and to soak up the atmosphere and relax. There are some great camping spots around and for we will definitely try to get back there one day. Wendy and Rob are already talking about doing another trip.
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