straight ahead was our best option rather than turning around, as the sealed road seemed to start in less distance than what we had just travelled. This proved (to our relief) to be true and soon we were on our way again - however the fact that we couldn't physically take our "shortcut" through the sand meant that we had actually lost about a half hour or so of driving. Oh well.
5 minutes down the road and suddenly a pair of ducks flew across in front of us. Splat! Lucky it wasn't a Kangaroo or a Wombat or we would have been in trouble ... as it was the thunder storm later in the night removed all signs of the damage.
After settling in to our camping spot at Rainbow Beach we went online and booked ourselves on a day tour of Fraser Island. We were thinking of hiring a 4WD but decided that for a single day the tour was a better option, and with a 9AM start we had plenty of time to get ready in the morning. We were cooking breakfast at about 7:15 AM this morning when the tour operator rang to say that it was leaving at 7:40 instead because of a "King Tide" blocking all beach access on the south part of the Island. That was the quickest half-breakfast, pack up camp, shower and run to the pick up location I think I ever want to experience! Once on our way we found that we had to catch the barge at River Head (near Hervey Bay) instead of at Inskip Point (just up the
road) because of the tide, so all up it took THREE HOURS before we landed on the island. The barge trip was HOT and everyone on the tour was covered in sweat by the time we started the island tour so we were very very glad of the air conditioning on the 4WD bus!
The tour though made it all worthwhile. Fraser island is about 100km long by 25km wide so there was no way we could see it all, but what we did see was awesome. If you don't know, this is the world's largest sand island and is heritage listed. It used to be logged, so our first stop was "Central Station", the original base of logging operations. All signs of that were pretty much
wiped out during WW1 when the army used the base for target practice - these days it is an incredible chunk of sub-tropical rainforest with huge trees and a crystal clear creek running through it. After that we headed to Lake Mackenzie - this is the one you see in all the brochures ... a fresh water lake formed in a hollow in the sand dunes with crystal clear waters. It's ranked as the #7 best swimming location in the world and after an hour in the water there today I can only agree! The hot trip across in the barge was totally forgetten!
Next stop was the Eurong Beach Resort where we were treated to a buffet lunch (topped up by a few cold beers from the bar), and then it was on to the "Seventy five Mile Beach" which is the major "highway" on Fraser with an 80 km speed limit! We travelled about half way up the beach to the "Pinnacles" (or "Coloured Sands"), before returning to the wreck of the Maheno for a photo break. This is a cruise liner that used to do the Auckland-Sydney route but eventually found itself beached on Fraser after the tow-rope broke when a Japanese company bought it and were taking it back to japan for scrap metal. During WW2 it was also used as target practice by the armed forces so now only half of it is visible.
Final stop before the drive to the southern tip for the ferry back to Inskip Point was at Eli Creek for another swim. On the way along the beach we also saw a young Dingo (Fraser Island has the only pure bred Dingo's remaining in the world). It was a long and memorable day topped off with a nice pub meal and a few drinks... tomorrow we head north again, possibly as far as Rockhampton, but anything is possible
1 comment:
Ha!! LOL we had the same thing but opposite happen to us... We were told to drive on the ferry @ Harvey Bay only to be told on arrival that we needed to be down @ rainbow bloody well beach Bugger was my first, middle and final attityude until we set tread on the sand at Fraser Island Awesome was the next state of mind.. Great Photos Keep on enoying Shaun and Shell
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