Visiting Fraser Island

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Trip Start Jan 16, 2008 Previous
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  Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Hi,
We arrived in Hervey Bay in time for tea and indulged ourselves in an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet in the hostel for 4pounds95 each.
We were up toooo early the next morning at half6 to get our day tour to Fraser Island. It was *a little* chilly at that time in the morning as we waited for the bus to pick us up.
Fraser Island is a gigantic sandbar measuring 120km by 15km, it was created by thousands of years of longshore drift. Although you'd be wrong to imagine it as desert island, rainforests and over 200 freshwater lakes dot the landscape. There are dunes too, towering up to 224m tall, allegedly there is more sand here than in the Sahara Desert.
The island takes it's European name from James and Eliza Fraser, the Captain of the Stirling Castle and his wife were shipwrecked on the island in 1836. They were captured by the Aborigines and separated. After the couple were reunited, the Aborigines thought they were scheming to escape so they speared James through the throat, killing him, his remains are still lost somewhere on the island. Eliza was resued a few years later by an escaped convict and on her return to England she sold her story to the newspapers.
In the 1900s European settlers realised the value of Fraser's timber and began logging, the island was also mined for it's mineral sand. In the late 20th century the focus shifted from exploitation to protection, the sand mining ceased in 1976 and the logging in 1991. Unfortunately sometime in this period the Aboriginal tribe lost their land and the Church moved them from the island.
Anyway, back to our trip....
We crossed over to the island on a ferry where we boarded a 4x4 coach thing with biggggg wheels. The drives between sights were extremely buMPy.
First we had a short walk along Wanggoolba Creek in the rainforest, we had to stay on the paths so we didn't get eaten by snakes or spiders or dingoes. Warren, our guide, told us the names of trees and some of the history of the island. We saw some living fossils, ferny-plant-things (yes that's their scientific name), they have been around since the dinosaurs and are only found in 24places in the world. They are stubborn, having not evolved at all.
We drove over to the east side of the beach where there is a 75mile beach 'highway' and we were driving along when we broke down. We were actually on an official 'highway', you can be booked for speeding and can be stopped for a breathiliser test (this may be because there are alot of young adults going across to do self-drive tours in 4x4s). The thermostat was broken so instead we drove back a bit for an early lunch at Eurong Resort while it was fixed.
It got fixed. So we drove back along the highway to Eli Creek, a crystal clear freshwater stream. There is an ancient layer of humus, decayed leaflitter, underneath Fraser Island which acts as an impermeable layer. When it rains the freshwater becomes trapped in the island, Eli Creek is a 'leak' from the top of this supply. We waded up Eli Creek and we waded back down, it was about knee-deep.
We saw our first dingo on the beach at the bottom of the creek. The dogs were first brought across to the island by the Aborigines after Asian merchants brought them to Australia. The Aborigines used them to keep their children warm at night, like living duvets. Shortly after the island became a tourist attraction, hotel resorts started using the dogs as their own free waste disposal units. They set up feeding stations around the back of resorts to get rid of the scraps. The dogs became reliant on the food, not teaching their young how to hunt but rather where and when to go for a free meal. Their numbers multiplied reaching 600-700. When the island became listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site the resorts were banned from feeding the dogs, leaving them rather hungry and angry. There were reports of dogs killing each other for food and some tourists were bitten. It was in 2001 when a 9year old boy was tragically killed by the dogs that the government decided to do something about it. They shot lots of dogs in the tourist areas and fenced off resorts. Our guide said he has no doubt that if the tragedy repeated itself there'd be no dogs left on the island afterwards.
Next we visited the Maheno, the wreck of a passenger liner that was blown ashore by a cyclone in 1935 while being towed to a Japanese scrap yard.
Our last stop of the tour is the stunning Lake McKenzie, Fraser's most beautiful freshwater lake. This lake was also created by an impermeable layer of humus but it's separate to the underground freshwater, it's more of a giant puddle. The lake is incredibly clear and at half4 we braved it and went swimming!! It was rather chilly but swimming out it suddenly drops off becoming deep. This gives the lake a black appearance even though it's completely clear, it was very odd and impossible to descirbe really.
After the trip we met up with a Welsh lady, a guy from from Brighton and a German couple for A drink, they were nice.
Monday morning (Bam's 16th birthday!!), we sat on the beach for a little and went for a paddle before our overnight 18hour bus to Townsville. xxxxxxx

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