Si's Year Out! (Plus Europe! Plus Morocco!): Fraser Island!

Note: I've added some stuff to the last couple of posts :)

Day 1

I didn't need to look for a place to sleep that night, the woman at the booking office said I could leave the car round the back of the shop while I was away, so I thought I might as well sleep there too! I was so excited about going to Fraser Island that I didn't sleep much that night and woke up at 6:30am. It was pissing it down with rain. I stood outside the shop waiting for the bus to come get me at 8am and by 8:20am I was wondering if they had forgotten me! But no, the bus turned up and the guide introduced me to all the other people in the group. There was a German couple, a French girl, an Irish couple, a Swiss girl, two American girls and an Italian couple (who I practiced my Italian on!).

Once we were down the road a bit the guide said that usually the weather is good on Fraser Island if its bad on the mainland.....I thought that was quite optimistic but he was right! By the time we rolled up the beach to the crossing point the sun was beating down on us and it was a beautiful day :) It was nice to get out of the bus because we had just done about 80km of unsealed 4WD tracks and sandy, bumpy, beach roads (anyone who knows me well will know that I get VERY travel sick!). Anyway, as the ferry carried us over, the guide told us a bit about the island. Fraser Island is the biggest 'sand island' in the world and is composed entirely of sand apart from one anchor point, an old volcano sticking out of the sea. Over thousands of years sand that was washed off the mainland built up around the anchor point to create the island. The island is home to loads of rare animals and trees. For example, Fraser Island is home to the purest dingoes in the world (because they don't allow dogs on the island to prevent cross-breeding) and a species of tree that resists salt water and only grows there and in French Guiana.

Once we were on the Island we thundered up the beach (the main 'road' on the island is the beach!) to the accommodation owned by the company. This comprised of three, 6 bed, dorms, each with a shower (with hot water!) and toilet - a luxury compared to my usual accommodation (the bed in the back of my car). The guide said they had a room for the couples, a room for the girls and a room for the boys....this meant that I got a room for myself!!!

We had lunch and headed off to our first destination, Eli Creek, a freshwater creek running over bright white sand into the sea. The guide explained that the island collects rainwater like a sponge but it can't escape because the salt water under the island is denser. Consequently, it just bubbles up out of the sand, heavily filtered along the way, and runs off into the creek. All the taps on the island were basically pipes shoved into the ground with little pumps on them. He said that more fresh water flows into the sea daily than Sydney uses in a week! Next was a quick photo stop at the Maheno shipwreck, which was blown ashore by a storm while being towed to Japan in 1935. Apparently the Australians trained the RAAF on Fraser Island, who used the boat for target practice. At one point a bomb landed right in the middle and split the ship in half, one half sinking into the sand! After that we went on to the coloured sands. These are cliffs made of compacted, different coloured sand, each layer left behind by a different ice age....there is also an aboriginal dream-time story of how the coloured sands were formed.

The Butchulla people, the Aboriginal inhabitants of Fraser Island, who call Fraser Island k'gari, tell of a girl who left her man to go off with the rainbow man. Now, the disgruntled jilted lover was a bit of a hero when it came to using his killing boomerang, and he decided to hunt down his ex and kill her for shaming him. He eventually found her on k'gari and threw his boomerang at her. The rainbow man, however, threw himself in front of her in an act of selfless love, and when the boomerang hit him he was shattered him into a million colourful pieces that fell onto the dunes of k'gari.

We ended the day at Indian Head, which is the remainder of the volcano that is the anchor point for the island and the only body of rock on the island. The main attraction of Indian Head is to sit at the top and look down through the crystal-clear waters at the sea life. There are a LOT of sharks in this area (so much that you aren't allowed to swim in the sea), so we were all looking out for them. There were millions of small fish, loads of big tuna, a few stingrays and some manta-rays. Then we saw about 10 bottle-nose dolphins surfing along on the waves! They would surf down the wave, climb back up it and do a jump at the end! We saw a small shark and then just as we were about to leave a 2 meter long shark but it was quite near the bottom so was more like a big black blob....and that was all on day one!

Day 2

Got woken up at 7:30am by out guide making cockerel noises outside the rooms! After a quick breakfast we drove into the rainforest (on the bumpiest road I've ever seen!) for a 5km hike through the bush. It was quite hard going because I couldn't really stand on the back part of my right foot (due to the cuts I got from surfing), but I made it in the end. When we reached the end of the track the guide met us there to show us a couple of trees. One was a 2000+ year old tree that only grows in about 20 places in the world and was used by the BBC in the documentary 'walking with dinosaurs'. The other was a patterned tree which inspired an American to create the classic camouflage pattern!

After that we drove to Lake Birrabeen. Apparently the lake exfoliates you and is known to the aboriginals as a healing pool! But the next lake was the most amazing. Lake Boomanjin is surrounded by Melaleuca trees, which is where tea-tree oil comes from. the oil seeps out of the Melaleuca trees into the lake, creating a big healing pool! I spent ages in this pool and the next day my foot didn't hurt at all. In fact, at the time of writing (3 days later) all the cuts have almost completely healed, amazing! At the end of the day we returned to the camp to find that some dingoes had got into the kitchen and were trying to find our food. The guide had to chase them out with a broom!

Day 3

After breakfast we were dropped off on the beach at the start of a walking track. We walked through the forest for about 30 minutes until we came to a huge sandblow (a dune with no vegetation to hold it in place that gets blown over by the wind). After walking about 3km over this sandblow we came to Lake Wabby, the deepest of the lakes on Fraser Island. The surroundings were beautiful, there was rainforest on one side and miles of sand on the other side. We had brought a body board to slide down the sand dunes on and some bread to feed the 'giant catfish'. I jumped in the water with some bread and waited for a catfish to come. Suddenly I was surrounded by all these big dark shapes and could feed them right out of my hand! Spent a while trying to catch one but I didn't manage it!

After a 30min walk back we returned to the camp for a late lunch and then headed off the island. It was a great trip, if you are ever in the area you have to check it out!