Fraser Island

I managed to drag the Canadians out of bed fairly early and we gathered all our stuff and caught a cab to the car rental place to collect our 4WD: a nice big Toyota Landcruiser.

We set-off at about 9:30, stopping at a supermarket to buy all our food (alcohol had already been done the night before!). It took us about an hour and a half to reach Gympie where we grabbed lunch (a very healthy McDonalds) although Eleri bought a happy meal (she's only little) and we got our trip mascot: a little stuffed dog which was called Soccer (I was outvoted 3-1. Philistine Canadians).

We then wended our way through the Great Sandy National Park to Rainbow Beach - the last bit of 'civilisation' before Fraser Island. We got our national park permit here, refuelled, brought the tyres down to 30 psi ready for sand driving and locked the front wheels. We killed a bit of time here for half an hour so that, by the time we reached Fraser Island, the tide would have gone out sufficiently to allow us to drive on the beach all the way up to Eurong - where we were staying.

We eventually set off up towards Inskip Point where we would get the ferry across. It was tarmac roads for about 11k until we hit the sand. We stopped just short and tried to engage the 4WD. Between Dave and myself we couldn't work it out, until I turned the engine back on and realised that we had been putting it in and out of 4WD without realising it. Just to make things worse, Dave K had been recording the whole thing on the video camera without us realising it and cut it off before we actually engaged it!!

I was quite nervous before hitting the sand for the first time. From experience I knew that the sand at Inskip point across to the ferry is always really soft and hard work even if it is a short distance. Thankfully we got across and on to the ferry without mis-hap and started heading across the Fraser Island. Both Daves and Eleri were very excited at this point (especially when I pointed out how close the Island actually was) and even I was excited as it had been a good 15 months since I'd been there.

The other 4WD on the barge was obviously a bit nervous so the ferry guy told him to follow me off the barge even though he was supposed to go first. I managed to hit the beach fine and avoid any Gibson style mishaps (i.e. burning the clutch out within seconds of getting on the island). We headed up the beach to the resort. Took us about 45 minutes in total even going about 60/70 kph along the beach as the tide was heading out leaving some nice hard sand to drive on.

We got to the resort about 4/5pm and checked in. We had a nice apartment on the third floor and the balcony looked over the pool towards the sea. We got all out stuff in, loaded the fridge (and I mean loaded!!) and then all headed into the pool with the plastic football to play around for a few hours doing headers. Dave K and I set the record with 12 whereas Eleri and Dave managed 7 headers in 10 attempts. Which does mean they managed at least three efforts where they threw the ball to each other and missed.

Our first full day on Fraser was absolutely beautiful with blue skies and sun. We headed up the beach to Cornwall Break road and then headed inland towards Lake Wabby. It was our first bit of driving on inland tracks and I was loving it! We were bouncing around like crazy trying to avoid all the pot-holes and the suspension was earning it's keep. It was also quite a scenic drive through the rainforest. We arrived at Lake Wabby car park and the first thing we saw was an impressive 1m long Lace Monitor which slowly moved off as we tried to get a closer look.

The walk to Lake Wabby lookout was about 500m but was well worth it when we got there. Wabby is a natural tea-tree oil lake (hence the green appearance). It is pushed up against a huge sand dune. It was about a km walk down through the rain-forest to get to the lake and you arrive right at the top of the sand dune. There was a family using boogy boards to slide down the sand and into the water. We set ourselves up by the lake shore and dived straight in. There were whole shoals of either catfish or dogfish swimming around. They got pretty close to us too, which allowed us to take the piss out of Dave more due to his fear of sharks!

We spent about two hours here before walking back up the hill to the car and heading back to the resort for lunch. After lunch, we took the back route out of Eurong and headed to Lake McKenzie. The roads here, while still pitted and full of pot-holes, were a lot wider and worked in a kind of one-way system meaning that we didn't have to keep reversing into passing places. The forest here was really impressive and we saw some HUGE trees. It took us about half an hour to get to Lake McKenzie. When we arrived it was absolutely heaving with tourists although because a fair few were on the daily tour buses they left fairly quickly and within half an hour it was a lot more peaceful. We chilled out here throwing the ball around and drinking the lake (ok so that was mainly me but it did taste nice!).

The next day we got up early and headed up 75 mile beach pretty much all the way to the top of the island. The tide was starting to head in so we had to use the small inland tracks to get round Poyungan Rocks and Yidney Rocks. Our first stop was the wreck of the Maheno. She was a passenger liner being transported to Japan to be broken up as scrap metal when bad weather cut the towline to the ship towing her and she ended up beached on Fraser Island. Refloating her was considered impossible and she was abandoned there. She was also used as target practice during WWII. It's amazing how much has broken up in the two years since I first saw the wreck and it probably won't be long before she's completely gone.

We continued our way up the beach to Indian Head (named by Captain Cook because he saw lots of aborigines stood on it watching im sail by) and took the small inland track round the head land and headed up towards the Champagne Pools. This was new territory for me too as I'd never been this far up before - mainly due to running out of time. The walk from the car park to the pools had some amazing views back down to Indian Head too. The pools themselves are very large rock pools - some deep enough that you can't stand up in them. The waves look really impressive breaking over the rocks and flooding the pools (giving them the name).

We worked our way back down the beach (round various heads and rocks) to Eli Creek which is the largest creek that empties out into the ocean on the Eastern beach. It has formed a lazy river which can float you all the way down. Unfortunately the water level was a lot lower than I'd seen before so it couldn't really do that. It was also starting to rain a little so we didn't spend long here. We did see a small eel though.

Our final day on Fraser started with a bit of a crisis. As we started to load up the 4WD we noticed the hazards were flashing. We started the car to make sure the battery was fine and checked to see that there were no alarms flashing. We then called the breakdown assistance people who suggested removing the fuse and putting it back in. After three attempts for them to work out which fuse box the indicator fuses were in, we located it and removed it to try and re-set the hazards but that didn't work. Eventually we decided to leave the fuse out until we got back onto the mainland, put it back into the car for the drive to Brisbane, then remove it until we returned the car.

After we had sorted this out we headed back inland where the plan was to head to Lake McKenzie for a bit then head southwards past some new lakes to Dilli village then head down to the barge. McKenzie was pretty empty when we arrived, mainly because we were so early and we managed to get some good pictures although it did start to rain.

We then drove round McKenzie to join up with the road heading south. Our first call was Lake Birrabeen, which was a beautiful lake - at least the equal to Lake McKenzie so it was suprising that there were so few people there. We had a swim and a bit of a game of cricket (entertaining teaching the two Dave's to play cricket). We then continued south to Lake Boomanjin where we stopped for a short time. It was a beautiful lake but nowhere near as beautiful as the others.

The driving got pretty entertaining from hereon as we met plenty of traffic coming the other way with not too many places to pass and we had several tight squeezes and one instance of having to reverse back about 200m when meeting about three oncoming cars. The worst case was meeting the slasher coming on to meet us. The slasher is a tractor with a giant circular saw on the side whcih is used to cut back vegetation. Unfortunately for us, the only passing place we could find was on the same side as the slasher and so he very delicately passed us with the saw retracted. Still far too close for comfort. He had left some souvenirs and we spend the remainder of the trip meandering round discarded tree branches.

Once we made it to the beach it was a quick trip down to the barge and back across to the mainland.