On Dingo Alert at Fraser Island

Oh my goodness - we've been to Fraser Island! In my mind Fraser Island was all about driving in sand. We had carted a tyre deflator, pump and snatch strap across nearly 10,000 kms mostly for this. Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island but there was far more to it that just sand.

To get to Fraser Island we drove through Hervey Bay. It looked like a town going ahead.

Getting onto the ferry at River Heads to cross to Fraser Island was interesting. Everyone had to back onto the ferry.

The reason for backing on was that it's way too narrow to do anything other than drive forward onto the jetty on Fraser island!

We quickly threw our bags into our lovely hotel room and rushed down to the beach to catch the sunset. We were so glad we made the effort. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen.

After months of planning, we finally got to do our first real driving on sand. We brought out the tyre deflater (you have to let tyres down to drive on sand) and tried to look like we knew what we were doing but reading the instructions out loud and still needing to ask for help was a bit of a giveaway!

We drove onto our first sand track and were amazed by how rugged the road was. There were dips, holes and blind crests as well as deep sand. We later realised that the first few hundred metres were among the hardest of all the tracks we drove on! 

Often the track was very narrow or well below ground level. We drove most of the time with the side mirrors closed and managed to avoid too many scratches.

The sandy holes made the car bounce in a fun way and I was reminded of the 70's KFC ad where the family bounced along the road in their very bouncy car. I looked the ad up on YouTube and found it!

It's here if you want to see it. You'll have to copy and paste the link. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YtAVIGq1ko

We finally arrived at the eastern beach on the other side of the island. As much as I'm not a fan of the concept of beach driving (what happens to all those crabs?) it was an exhilarating feeling of freedom cruising along the beach.

The sand blows were amazing. Sand finds a weak point to venture inland and encroaches on the bush, killing everything in its path. At the Lake Wabby blow the sand has blocked a creek to form a lake. 

The blow was like a weird Saharan moonscape. It was spectacular!

The 'head' of the blow was encroaching on the lake it had formed. The walk down was so steep!

Even the sign was being swallowed by the sand!

We don't usually stay at resorts when we travel but there weren't many options on the island. It turned out to be fantastic! Our room was in the bush and the food at the restaurant was really good. They also had activities and we went on a kayak tour one day. We explored the mangrove-lined creek nearby. It was so peaceful.

One of the special things about FI is the dingoes. We had read about them and there were signs everywhere warning people how to react to them. They can be quite aggressive and children and even small teenagers are in danger of being attacked. The resort, campgrounds and picnic areas were all fenced with 2 metre high fencing which was often electrified as well. Dingo grids let cars in and kept dingoes out. They had pointy bars and trip wires on them,

We were excited to se our first dingo tracks on the beach on our first morning. Now just to see a dingo!

There was plenty of other wildlife around. This whistling kite let us get quite close.

We saw a few goannas, or lace monitors as they call them.

The eastern side of the island is one long beach that stretches for 100 kms or so and it's the main highway on the island. The tide was fairly high so we were driving through sea water some of the time.

I confess, I got a bit carried away with the amazing natural textures of the island. I took so many photos! 

Paperbark.

Nature's graffiti.

Fraser Island is home to over half of the world's 'perched lakes', lakes that are created by leaf litter holding the fresh rainwater on top of it. Lake McKenzie was the most stunning blue.

At 'central station' spectacular epiphytes grew on trees that were planted for logging earlier in the century. They had a thriving logging industry here for a while. I can't believe they got big logs out of here on bullock trains. The terrain is so rugged and all sand!

Check out the size of these!

At central station a beautiful boardwalk wound through the tropical rainforest that existed in the gorge. The photo below looks like a sandy track winds between the trees but look closer and you'll see a sheen on it. You're looking through water - the sand is the bottom of the creek. The water is so clear that it's hard to see.

An amazing strangler fig.

An enormous satinay tree. They used to log these.

Despite being at places frequented by dingoes, we still hadn't seen any.  We continued to keep our eyes open.

At times, coloured sands would show through the layers.

Walking along the beach near where we stayed one day, we saw lots of dark spots on the sand when the tide was out. We soon realised they were crabs. There were millions of them!

The patterns they made in the sand from digging their holes were amazing.

One night we did a bush tucker tasting. It was cool!

We later did a night walk. it had been raining on and off during the day so we hoped it would hold off during our walk. It didn't. We got cold and wet. The wildlife didn't like it either and mostly stayed tucked up warm and dry and out of sight.

There were a few cane toads around but the one hugely interesting part of the night was learning about the local eels. In a small patch of the creek right next to the resort lives an eel. We saw her quite a few times. Her life story is amazing. It's estimated that she's about 10 years old. She will stay in her small patch of creek - an area of about 10 square metres and only averaging about 15 cms deep - for another 40 years or so. 

This is her patch of creek. Another eel lives above this section and a new young one appeared in an even smaller section above that a month or so ago.

When she reaches about 50 years old she will then make her way to the sea then swim across the sea to New Caledonia! There she will mate, have babies and die. When her babies grow a bit, they will then make the return journey all the way across the ocean back to the very creek their mother came from. 

This story astonishes me. How does an eel that lives a fairly immobile life in a small patch of creek, develop the muscles to suddenly swim that distance? How does she adjust from fresh water to sea water? How does she eat if her usual diet is only found on the creek? How does she navigate? How does she find a mate when he has to have made the same journey at the same time to the same location? How do her babies do all the above things in reverse? And the big question - why? Nature is a mystery sometimes.

The next day we explored more blows. Kirrar Sandblow was really cool.

The constant wind formed amazing textures on the sand.

Eli Creek was lovely to wade up. Again, the water was crystal clear.

One of my favourite sights was the Maheno wreck. This old cruise liner had an amazing past including being a hospital ship inWW2. It now lies wrecked on the long eastern beach. The sea washes through it and the rust colours were spectacular. 

It's a bit of a shock to see what she used to look like in her heyday!

As the tide lowered, the beach became the most beautiful, widest road you would ever see!

We made it as far north as Champagne Pools. These can be wonderful swimming holes (and the only safe place to swim on the east coast) but they were largely full of sand when we were there. It wasn't warm enough for us to swim anyway but it looked beautiful.

We were talking to another couple here and mentioned that we still hadn't seen a dingo. They were only a few minutes behind us and they saw one! We looked where they had seen it but still no luck......

Not all of the perched lakes look crystal clear. Tannins and minerals in the water make some lakes look brown or coloured. Lake Boomanjin, one of the largest perched lakes in the world, had a beautiful range of purples, reds and oranges in its water. 

There were banksias everywhere. Most had finished flowering but I did see a few late bloomers.

Sadly, it was time to leave. We wanted to leave via the ferry off the southern end of the island so it was another beach drive to get there. As we drove all along the beach looking for the ferry landing we noticed one patch of sand that was churned up by vehicles. Then the penny dropped - this was the ferry landing! There was nothing there except beach!

The ferry pulled up and for an incredibly expensive $85 we enjoyed a 10 minute ferry ride back to the mainland.

Fraser Island really was a special place. We will have to come back here again one day, even if it's only to find a dingo!

Cheers,

Heather and John