Fraser Island

It's a week today since I came back from Fraser Island. I really enjoyed the trip there. I travelled with Sand Island Safaris. There were only nine of us on the trip, plus Tony, our guide. We stayed at Eurong Beach Resort on the East coast of the island, where I shared a cabin (number 8 Surf Side) with Betty and Paul, two cousins from Vancouver. The other people on our trip were Stuart and Jenny from Macclesfield, UK (both retired), Heidi and Chris from Bathurst, who had got married the previous weekend and were on their honeymoon, and two young Norwegian women, Kristina and Metta.

I told them that I had got married before I left the UK, then left Paul behind, causing Betty to remark that I was on my moon without my honey. I liked that! I related it to the group of women I went kayaking with this morning and they all thought it was pretty good.


The photo was taken on Wednesday 8th March (International Women's Day in fact) on Waddy Point. I had just seen a shark out in the ocean, then we saw a Manta Ray beach momentarily at the foot of the rocks down below.

Fraser Island is a sandbar - the biggest in the world I think - measuring 120 km by 15 km. It's half the size of Bali, or so Tony told us. You need a 4WD vehicle to get around in all that sand. It's got an amazing variety of plants and animals, including what is believed to be the purest strain of dingos (undiluted by inter-breeding with domestic dogs). It is also now visited by about 350,00 people a year!

According to popular myth, all the sand from the coast of NSW ends up on Fraser Island. There are a lot of freshwater lakes on the island, all fed by rainwater: window lakes, perched dune lakes and barrage lakes. There are over 40 perched dune lakes on the island, which is over half of all those in the world. These lakes are literally, as the name suggests, lakes perched on sand dunes. I saw a lot of lizards (lace monitors) on Fraser Island and a lot of spiders. I've got some good spider photos (which my cousin, Jane, would like no doubt - being a spider fan) which I may try to upload sometime - mainly Golden Orbs, but there is a great shot of a Huntsman which was hiding behind the door (on the floor) in the men's toilets.

Our first stop on arrival at the island was at Lake Birrabeen, as perched dune lake with a shore and base of fine silica sand - great for exfoliating and cleaning your jewellery (and your teeth apparently). Fraser Island was mined for sand at one time (it was also extensively logged). This was one of several lakes that we swam and played in over the 3-day trip. We didn't do any swimming in the ocean as there are a lot of sharks.

On Wednesday - the only full day we had on the island - we drove north from Eulong along the beach. It's somehow surreal driving for some way along a beach of unbroken sand, with the Pacific waves. At one point Tony pointed out some Sea Eagles circling out at sea. You could see the disturbance in the water below and he said it was shark feeding on mackerel - the eagles were waiting their turn. Sure enough, you could se the shark's fins breaking the surface as it (or they) swirled around after the fish. We swam in the Champagne Pools later on - sea pools amongst the rocks. Tony said a Manta Ray was stranded there recently, after coming in with the tide. We also saw the wreck of the Maheno, rusting on the beach (it's been there for 70 years or so), admired the coloured sand of the Pinnacles and then went on to Eli Creek, where we took it in turns floating down the creek on an inner tube.

On Thursday morning we did a two-kilometre walk to Lake Wabby, a barrage lake, beside the Hammerton Sandblow. We walked about a kilometre through the desert on the way there - very hot - then back through the forest.