Beautiful Fraser Island
Trip Start
Mar 18, 2007
1
54
101
Trip End
Mar 16, 2008
Hervey Bay,
Australia
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Just back from a wonderful tour to Fraser Island (with the Fraser Island Company). Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and a world heritage site (here is a few more details if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Island). The lonely planet says that there is more sand here than in the Sahara. The island is 124km long, and in the past was used for logging due to the quality and size of the trees.
After getting the ferry across from Hervey Bay, we jumped on our 4WD bus for a bumpy journey through the interior of the island (reminded us of Bolivia!) before arriving on 75 mile beach which is the 'highway' of the island.
After stopping for a delicious buffet lunch, we headed up to Eli Creek which is a stunning freshwater stream which 4 million litres of water flows out of every hour, after a cooling paddle we visited the Maheno Shipwreck
Central station
. This ship was a luxury liner in the early 1900's (built in Scotland) before being shipwrecked when being taken for scrap.Then it was further up the beach to get some great views over the island from Indian head, one of three rocks that the sand congregates around. We then went back to our camp for the night, our tent was pretty luxurious and we even had steak for dinner, now that is camping!
After dinner we took a walk down to the beach to enjoy the clear night skies and also to see the phosphorescence in the sand (I've googled for the reasons for this, but I'm afraid I'm in the dark, hoho!), we also saw some cane toads.
On our second day, we headed off first to Lake Wabby which was a 1.8km over the dunes, quite a workout! However it was worth the walk for a cooling dip in the waters once we arrived. For lunch we went to the subtropical rainforest in the centre of the island at central station (previously home to the loggers), after a short walk it was a very bumpy journey to the beautiful Lake Birrabeen, a blue lake perched between the white dunes. Our guide Alex informed us of the spa like qualities of the water so we were straight in to make the most of it.
It was a really fun 2 day trip and we met some great people on the bus, now it is back on the greyhound for the 6h trip to Rockhampton. Tomorrow we are off to a cattle station, so I'm looking forward to that as I hope to get to be a cowboy!
Bye for now.
