The Sand Island

We finally made it to Fraser Island, (pronounced F-razor) Queensland. This has been a location that everyone said we needed to visit. Fraser is the largest sand island in the world. It's about 70 miles long and 15 miles wide. It's literally a 2 hour drive from Bundaberg to get to the ferry that takes you there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Island

The jetty where you get on the boat.

We left on Thursday from Bundaberg and had 2 1/2 days on the Island. We stayed at Kingfisher Bay Resort, a beautiful resort on the west side of Fraser. 

The room was not super deluxe but nice enough. The resort has a relaxed feel to it, lots of open areas and pools with bars, definition of a vacation destination!

We arrived with half a day to organize what we would try to fit into our 3 day, 2 night stay on the Island. We had booked an all day tour of the Island for Saturday, with a quick turn around to get on the last ferry Saturday evening. We decided to go to an informational meeting with one of the rangers at the hotel lobby. She gave us good info about walks around the resort and even talked up a walk to Lake McKenzie...which is 2 1/2 hours one way.  

The thing about a sand island is that, um...it's all sand. That means the roads are all sand, which makes them very tricky to negotiate in a car. I will go into that in a bit. But it also means that walking is tiring, especially up and downhill. I was not up for a 5 hour trek on sand, not that interesting without a guide, and really difficult going. We opted for a shorter walk along a path that took us to some interesting forests and a fresh water creek. This is some of what we saw.

The path

We heard there were brown snakes lurking about, just in case I had my snake stick, this would be good for Dingo's who got overly friendly.

We were hoping to see the wild dogs, 

                                          From the overlook we could see the bay and jetty.

 This is a tree with insects markings, the zig zags are from a moth larvae that lives under the bark until it matures, and emerges as a moth. Metamorphosis at its' best.

We learned from the ranger that you had to do this walk at low tide, otherwise it is impassable.

As you can see, the day was cloudy with rain predicted. Not exactly what we ordered but that's what we got.

This leads to our plans for a sunset drink and nibbles (and Australian term) at well, sunset. (5-6pm)  This little event was at the Jetty Bar which has a lovely view of the sunset.

We pre-ordered a prawn platter and anti-pasta platter and waited for the day to improve. Guess what! The day got worse, rain, and not just a sprinkle, started about 2pm and progressively got heavier as the afternoon wore on. We called to the Jetty Bar and asked to have the platters delivered to our room but no one was available to do that. Now what? John made a mad dash to the Bar, collected the platters and raced back. Not that water doesn't improve things, but the drenching of the nibbles did not improve them. Actually I don't think they would have been all that good without the rain, but it was really sub par. (We gave that a low mark on Tripadvisor)

If the night had been lovely, this is what we would have enjoyed. Oh well.......

The next day was our full day tour of the Island with a big 4 wheel drive truck. Renting a car or not was a big discussion point. When John asked people at work about driving on Fraser, the guys were all for it, lots of good fun mate. When I asked gals, it was, don't do it, asking for trouble. I looked into the cost of renting a high 4 wheel drive and it was $200 for 1/2 day and $400 for full day. That decided it, we could be shuttled about the whole day with someone else dealing with the road conditions for $300. Maybe our next time there we can try driving. 

Morning "Tea"

The Truck

We had a full bus with many German tourists on board. Our driver, Peter, spoke German and made his passengers feel right at home.

We are getting about with quite a bit of jiggling about, Peter saying the roads were in better shape due to the rain we had received the day before. If this was a better ride I can't imagine what it was like without the rain. Going through sand is similar to driving through snow, really deep snow. You sort of go sideways when it gets soft and deep, and then the 4 wheel drive kicks in and you bounce back into the rut and move forward with a jolt. The best driving was on the beach where this picture was taken. The speed limit on the beach was 80k/m, where the roads were 30k/m. The week we were there was right after the 2 week school holidays when there were 9000 campers on the Island. Without the 9000 campers the beach highway was very busy. There are obviously no lanes on the beach, and the tide being high or low dictate how much space there is to navigate. Much of the difficulty of driving on the beach is people getting stuck by the incoming tide.

 OOPS

Lots of high ruts to navigate

What happens when the levels on the beach changes.

We have a Rav 4 which does have 4 wheel drive but not enough clearance to get around on Fraser Island. (Even John agreed!)

This is what school holidays looked like on Fraser Island.

Skeleton of Maheno

This is the ship wreck Maheno which was a hospital ship among other things until 1935.

We had the option here to take a short plane ride over the Island to see what we couldn't from the land. It was amazing...

Our pilots

Da plane

Butterfly Lake

Heart Lake

 Shipwreck from above

Cool, huh?

We even saw a whale and her calf from the air.

The flight was only about 20 minutes but well worth the $75/person cost. I need to thank Theresa and John Seem who gave us a gift certificate for Kingfisher Resort before we left and we used it for this plane ride. One of the other land forms you can't really see from the ground are these 'sand blows' which are acres of sand that get blown across the island when the conditions are right.

But the really amazing thing was when we got back on the ground and saw these Dingos, mom and pups, just walking the beach and looking for food. 

This is a puppy.

Dingos are native to Australia, they are similar in looks to German Shepard's only blond. The dogs on Fraser are among the most pure as they are mostly breading with other Dingos. Here in Bundaberg you see what looks like Dingos but they are mixed with domestic dogs and aren't pure. They are beautiful, these young ones looked scrawny, and they were looking for food on the beach, but what a joy to see them!

www.ehp.qld.gov.au/wildlife/livingwith/dingoes/pdf/dingo-facts.pdf

You have to be careful when approached by a Dingo, never turning you back on them, but they should leave you alone. Mom with pups, that's a different story...we never got out of the truck to test that one.

After a nice lunch at the Eurong Resort on the east side of the Island, we resumed our afternoon ride and learned how Fraser Island was discovered and used for decades for lumber. This area was Aboriginal Land with about 800 Indigenous living there. The area was discovered rich with old growth lumber and was over forested, this making the lumber companies wealthy but leaving environmental scars on the Island. The lumbering industry ended its' time on Fraser in 1991 when Fraser was declared a World Heritage site and protected. 

http://www.fido.org.au/moonbi/moonbi108/Logging_Backgrounder.pdf

The last stop was Lake McKenzie, a fresh water lake close to  Kingfisher Resort. The lake is known for it's crystal clear water and silica sand beaches. The late afternoon is when the water is warmest and the sun at a cosy angle. It had clouded up a bit for us but it was lovely. I didn't go in the water, but John did, and he enjoyed it. (Reminded him of Lake Geneva in July!)

Had to bring our Sendik's bag here and take a picture for Karen Rader!

You can see the silica sand beach, it felt like powered sugar.

So our time was over and we had a quick turn around to meet the last ferry for Hervey Bay. Everyone said this was a "not to be missed" place and it is a beautiful piece of Queensland. We may or may not have time to get there again, but we are so glad we did get there.