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Published: January 20th 2007
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The Drive
Driving on the sandy Island. We’re almost caught up with our blog entries… our Fraser Island trip was in late November and we just got the opportunity to update our blog on it!!
Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and home to the purest blood line of wild dingos, and rivals the most spectacular places in Australia.
We drove up to Hervey Bay (pronounced Harvey), and then with a group of 20 other people in two different SUV’s set off on a amazing two nights and three days around Fraser. To get there, we first got on a ferry with probably 15-20 other SUV’s all carrying around 11 people about to do the same thing. So you can imagine what it was like. A ferry full of Toyota Land Cruisers and 20+ year olds all about to drive on sand roads!
Our first stop on Fraser was Lake McKenzie, which is known for its rich mineral water that will polish all of your jewelry for you while you swim around. The lake was perfectly clear, apparently the whitest sand beach in the world and just a bit cool (probably around 25C). Arguably the most beautiful spot in the world.
Lake McKenzie
A clear, deep blue lake with a white sandy beach! No other lake will beat this one! As you drive up to it you start getting teased with views of it through the trees until finally you pop out into the car park and walk a short distance to the water. I think what made our first trip there the best was that it was REALLY hot on the island and there where 11 of us all stuffed into one car. Anyway, I could go on and on about McKenzie but I’ll leave it at that.
Driving around on the island took quite a bit of time. All the roads were one ways, so if you passed an exit to where you want to go just back there you had to go like 11km around in a circle to come back to it. This started to get just a little frustrating by the 2nd hour that we had been on Fraser. You’re going so slow that you don’t create any breeze coming into the car, and being in the forest there isn’t any natural breeze that will cool you down. So after leaving McKenzie we headed for the ocean beach as fast as we could to try and get some relief from the heat, also that
is where all the camping is and we needed to set up ASAP because so many of the people in our group had never been camping before, and for some it was the first time in a sleeping bag! How crazy is that?
Dinner was a combined cooking effort, with everyone crowding around trying to lend a hand. One of the girls (also one that hadn’t been camping before) was doing a great job on the salad and even went so far as to dress it with vinegar and dish soap! The bottles that everything was in were not clearly marked and she just assumed that something that looked like oil and was in our cooking stuff was oil. Oh well, not everyone eat too much of it! Although I would have to say that everyone did eat some, and trying not to offend her no one asked what the bitter taste was and just continued to eat until Elnaz saw soap bubbles on her plate. Stories we’ll tell for years!!
The next day we drove as far north on the island as we could and stopped at the Indian Heads lookout. This was a spectacular place and
we managed to see heaps of dolphins, sharks, manta rays, and turtles. We attempted to take as many pictures as we could, but we were too high up and it’s difficult to get good photos through water. You’ll just have to take our word for it, they were there.
We were meant to stay at Indian Heads for the whole day and wait for the tide to go back down so we could drive on the beach, but we started to get board and decided to attempt to get out of there and make it to this fresh water creek (ELI) to spend our day at. Fortunately we just made it and spent a good number of hours floating down the creek on your backs and drinking a few beers. This pretty much filled our day so we headed on out to a camping spot and set up camp. Just as everyone was starting to go to bed, one of the guys noticed a dingo wandering around camp, I guess looking for any scraps of food that he could find. Anyway, this started up a hunt in the dark by one particular guy that walked around with a flashlight
in one hand and his camera in the other trying to get close enough to the dingo to be able to take a picture. I don’t think things worked out all that well though cause he never said anything about it the next morning when we saw him again.
On the last day, the first stopping place was Lake Wabby, a lake set in the middle of the sand dunes. It was the perfect sand/water oasis. You can walk for km’s in the sand before you finally make it to the lake, and there is a huge dune that runs right into the water. Of course every guy there had to try running/rolling down the dune into the water and see how big of a splash he could get. I don’t think mine was all that impressive, but I did come up with sand in some very awkward places. After our whole group agreed that Lake Wabby was not as magnificent as Lake McKenzie we decided to try to get back to McKenzie one last time before having to get back on the ferry that afternoon. After driving around in circles for what seemed like for ever we finally
The famous Ship Wreck of Maheno
In the 1930's the ship was being towed to Japan for scraps when it hit cyclone conditions and it was washed ashore. got to the turn off that went into McKenzie only to find that it had been blocked off because a tour bus had caught fire and there were small brush fires all over the place and debris from the bus still on the road. We thought that was the end, but about 5 min down the road again a ranger told us that he was going to open the road to McKenzie again. We were probably one of the first people into the lake the second time and had it pretty much to ourselves. It was amazing!
It was such a fantastic trip, just sitting here writing about it makes me want to go back. Maybe one of these years!
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Mama P
non-member comment
beautiful!
Wow! How did I miss this blog entry?? What a great write-up and great pictures. You guys are sure hitting the amazing spots! Love you both tons. Love, Mom