Fraser Island

Despite Fraser Island being the largest sand island in the world, we camped two nights and spent three days driving around its beaches and overland tracks (no roads to speak of on this island) without Annette getting that glass-in-your-eye feeling sand and contacts so frequently team up to inflict.  Instead we both got that warm fuzzy feeling one often gets when in (or, in this case, on) a surreal natural setting.

The world's "largest sand island" doesn't necessarily inspire images of amazing scenery, rare wildlife, or even having fun.  But FI was all of the above: We were greeted by a dolphin as we drove on the beach after arriving by ferry; we saw humpback whales playing just off the beach of our campsite with a gorgeous sunset as their backdrop our first night; we watched dingoes go about their business on more than one occasion; we ate pipis (a clam-type animal that is easy to dig up and tasty to fry with chili sauce) caught by us and our tour-mates and cooked by our super-Aussie guide, Luke; Jeff drove our 4x4 in a small town (first opposite side of the road experience), on the beach, and on a bit of bumpy dirt track;  and we made friends with our car-companions cum-teammates. 

We toured FI by way of something called a tag-along tour, which consisted of 26 people divided into three 4x4s and one lead vehicle.  The driver of the lead vehicle was our guide, Luke.  Our Toyota Forerunner sat seven people with a very cramped three-person front seat, soon dubbed the "bondage seat" (our group took on the name, "Team Bondage").  The tour is designed to give you a thorough visit to FI over the course of 3 days and 2 nights. There are no roads on FI, only driving on the beach and a handful of inland tracks.  They used to let people hire their own 4x4s more often, but those tourists unaccustomed to the many nuances of driving on sand were frequently crashing them, injuring themselves and others, so these tag-along tours are now the main way to see the island for non-locals.  The cars, a guide, food, and camp gear are all provided (as are a shovel and a porto-tent for girls to use for wee only).

Everyone gets an opportunity to drive if they have the desire and a license (and, as Annette soon found out, the ability to drive a manual transmission).  Jeff took a few tries behind the wheel and didn't flip the car or injure any one, though he did drive for 15 minutes of his first stint with the parking brake on!  We really liked our group, made up of two German girls, a young and hilarious Austrian/Finish hybrid named Max, Kyle from Vancouver B.C., and a young English girl named Sally.  One of the German gals was our best driver, beasting dunes, soft sand, and everything in between all while chatting and laughing.  Our worst driver (surprisingly not Jeff) was the other German girl, who almost flipped the car for no apparent reason and nearly reduced Sally to tears (Sally was freaking out to the point that she began to try to read a book to take her mind off the driving.  Later, the driver told us she thought Sally was going to start crying.  A little after that Sally told us that she DID almost start crying!).

As with any tour, ours was made great because of our guide. Luke knew the island well and his knowledge gave us a great campsite and helped get us to beaches and other areas we might have missed with a guide less experienced with the weather and tides.  FI has many fresh water lakes, which have beautiful sandy beaches and freezing water (we only swam in one).  FI's beaches, views, and overall natural beauty is stunning.  The forests are from the Jurassic period, though the oldest and largest trees were logged early on in Oz history.  Driving on the beaches and through the overland tracks was niiiiiiiice.  And to say that the beaches and lakes were beautiful is being both modest and selling them both short.  The combination of natural beauty and unique wildlife (FI has the most genetically pure population of Dingoes in the world) was pretty darn terrific.

We left FI happy with our camping trip (we slept in tents both nights) despite the meager lunches (no more salad wraps!--the dinners were all good) and excited to explore the rest of the East coast.


Note:
Our guide Luke was pretty damn good.  He knew his shit - from tides to the best tracks - which helped us get the most of our short time on Fraser Island.  Chatting with him the second night was a highlight, and we'd like to share a story he told us about one of his favorite wildlife encounters on the island:  On one tour, he had a mother and daughter from Germany.  The mother was intent on seeing a dingo whilst on FI.  She would ask him questions about dingoes in her broken English, hoping to get as much info as possible to help her spot one of the famous dogs.  The last morning she was brushing her teeth when a wallaby bounded right through camp, directly past her, between her and Luke.  Her eye got as big as two saucers, and she looked to him with the tooth brush still in her mouth and said hopefully, "Dingo?"

The most common way to see FI is to take a tour starting from either Rainbow Beach or Hervey Bay.  Ours began in Rainbow Beach, a town with fabulous beaches (one, we didn't see, that has something like twelve different colored sands, hence the name of the town) and not much else.  We stayed only one night before FI and one night after.  The day before we took our 4x4 self-drive tour was spent at an orientation for our tour followed by a guided walk up a giant sand dune (or sand blow, as the locals called it) above town where we gave boomerang throwing a try and found we're in need of a lot of practice. The sand blow also provided awesome views of the ocean and was an excellent location to watch the sunset. Rainbow Beach turned out to be a pretty nice little town all on its own.  Worthy enough for two photos on this blog anyway.