Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Dingos, a Rain Forest, and 100 Amazing Lakes! I hurried out of Cairns to get to Brisbane by plane today. Again, off to a city I know nothing about. For 1 night, I was to stay in Brisbane, wake up and catch the first train to the airport again to take a small flight to Hervey Bay. From there, I was to be picked up from the airport and shuttled off by ferry to the popular scenic destination of Fraser Island. What's at Fraser Island, you ask, that would constitute 2 pricey flights for a rushed 4 days and a hurried 4:30AM trek to the airport? Well, Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island, hosting Australia's only pure bred dingos, over 100 freshwater dune lakes, a shipwreck, and many more amazing birds, plants, and wildlife. On top of that, most of the transportation on the island is by rented 4WD caravans that seat 11 people or large 4WD tour guided buses, all driven around on the sand roads and along the hard packed beach dodging the waves of the ocean. Sounds pretty cool, I thought, so there's my reasoning.
Accessible from multiple cities, I was to leave
Very Tall Trees
Grow to over 100 feet tall.from Hervey Bay, the largest ferry location and the city with at least a little nightlife and a few hostels. The ferry was of normal size, transporting about 15 cars and at least 100 people. The ride was gentle through the almost enclosed bay, passing islands and not to many other boats. After 30 minutes we arrived at the small dock and divided into 2 groups, the 1 day trip and the now apparent, less popular 2 day trip. My 2 day trip group consisted of 10 people in a charter bus fitting 45. As we drove off on the sand roads into the forest, I now realized this wasn't going to be a smooth ride. We stopped to do a 45 minute walk through the rainforest, and yes it even rained in the rainforest, allowing a small leach to attach to my foot. The vegetation of the forest was truly amazing with moss growing on logs, towering Queensland Kauri and Brush Box trees reaching heights over 100 feet, and other amazing gum and eucalypt trees and plants growing in the sand.
We drove further into the island and then out to the coast to the Eurong Beach resort,
our dining and lodging facility for the night. We then continued up the coast, along the hard packed sand of this beach highway, completely blowing away any Pacific Coast Highway views in California. As I stared out the window at the waves crashing 20 feet from my window, our bus dodged a few boulders and other oncoming traffic with ease. We continued north towards the Indian Head viewpoint, passing a few other points of interest that we were to stop at on the way back. Parked and ready to take photos, we were all surprised to see our first Dingo walking around sniffing out the parking area for food. Dingos are small wild dogs and can be found to be dangerous if taunted, fed, or mistreated. Dingos in Australia became famous in 1980 when the story of Azaria Chamberlain had disappeared from her tent and her mother claimed that she saw a dingo come in a take her 9 week old baby. Later, the mother and father were tried and convicted of murder, although many years later were released as further evidence of Azaria's clothing in a Dingo lair showed possible truth in their statements. Shortly after the unsolved case,
Freshwater Eels
These were in most of the lakes and rivers. the media, newspapers, and movies made reference to the statement, "A Dingo ate my baby.", making it a common pop-culture reference about Australia and Dingos. Lines and references have even been made in episodes of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Far Side Comics, and Frasier.
After the photo session with Dingo the wonderdog, we headed up the hill to the view point. At the top we had excellent views of our tracks on the sand highway, clear views of the bright blue water, and the sounds of waves crashing on the rocks 100 feet below. Only after 10 minutes, someone spotted 2 small whales off the coast swimming and surfacing every so often. Driving further down the beach, we stopped at the Maheno shipwreck. This 1905 passenger liner served for 30 years, some as a hospital ship in the first World War, but later sold as scrap metal. As it was being towed, it got caught in a cyclone and washed up on shore. Since then it has been slowly covered with more and more sand, now being burried with as much as 3 stories worth. Even with that, the viewable areas of the ship came out as great photos and
Log Moss
Lots of Moss everywhere. truly something worth seeing.
We headed to Eurong again for a quick buffet lunch of meats, veggies, and salad. Returning to the bus, we headed back north to see Eli Creek, one of the top tourist destinations on the island. Eli Creek is an amazing freshwater creek which flows down from the center of Fraser Island with as much as 80 million liters of water per day. The creek runs quickly towards the ocean with cold freshwater along a boardwalk where people were walking up to a starting point and then floating down the river through the forest. At the end, a larger area gave way to children and other visitors playing in the water with footballs or just swimming around. Around the creek, we found a 6 foot python sleeping under a tree, numerous spiders the size of my hand, and freshwater eels. After shaking off the eerie feelings from my spider photos, we headed back to the resort to check into our rooms and relax. I was settled into a room with a Korean guy, who ironically spoke very little English. Dinner was a typical buffet style meal, but eneded with a delightful bread pudding and warm
Eurong Resort
Where we slept and ate. custard. The only bar in the resort had cheap jugs of beer and more music video's playing on the TV. Anxious for some good music, I put on some Death Cab for Cutie, Tenacious D, and Paul Simon. 3 dollars well spent.
After a great breakfast buffet of filling eggs, hash browns, and bacon, we were off on a wonderfully sunny day towards a few of the islands freshwater lakes. Fraser Islands lakes are some of the cleanest lakes in the world, often only polluted by sunscreen and soaps from swimsuits. Lake Wabby was our first destination after a 30 minute hike, we ended up coming down on a deep green lake surrounded by trees on 70 percent of it's border. The other 30 percent of the lake was a steep sand dune incline rising about 60 feet above the waters edge. As we all quickly shed our clothing, we dove into the water finding out that it went to almost 3-5 meters deep instantly. This is the reason the lake is dark green, is it's depth. After relaxing in the water, letting fish nibble on our feet, bus.
After lunch, our next lake destination was Lake McKenzie.
Dingo
Looks harmless enough, but I never saw it's teeth. Only around 200 left on the island, on purpose as they controlled and tagged Lake McKenzie is probably the most visited tourist destination on the island. The clear blue waters and white sand flyers spread all over Australia give it an amazing look. And let me tell you, once we got there, none of us were dissapointed. As we quickly headed through the picnic area, we also ran into a large Goanna Lizard searching the grounds for food. Once we got to the Lake, we jumped in to cool off for 2 hours. The freshwaters flowed over our bodies as we floated on our backs looking into the sky. The white sand, which was almost pure silica, was amazing to touch, almost transparent sand. With only a few clouds in the sky, the 2 hours went quickly, also making a python sand snake helped a little too. We packed up and as we were walking back to the bus, I ignorantly was walking barefoot. All of the sudden I felt a sharp pain in the bridge of my big toe and jumped to the side. I thought I had stepped on glass as I raised my foot to inspect it. Dangling from the pained area in my toe, hung a 1 inch long ant,
Indian Head
Great Lookout Point with huge pinchers. This black ant with huge legs was quickly flicked off as well as the pincher pulled out of my toe. After a few seconds, my toe went completely numb. Luckily it only lasted about a minute, but I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice, so my shoes quickly went on. I can't even imagine what an entire colony of those things biting me might feel like.
As we rode the ferry back to Hervey Bay, a cat sat in the captains office, happily being pet by passing tourists. We were dropped off at our hostels and I said my goodbyes to the group. At Beaches, my hostel, I met a bunch of really nice people from England, Canada, and Swizterland. After a nice dinner and a few beers, I headed off to sleep for my next day was to be in the company of my cousin, Darcy in Melbourne. I needed to prepare for the full festivities ahead as I'm sure my cousin was going to show me all that Melbourne had to offer.
Melbourne, some say it's better then Sydney......we'll find out soon....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0308s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mike (Crusher)
non-member comment
Dingo was his Name-o
Okay, how many slices of paradise are you visting? It seems each destination overshadows the other. You're right, the beaches and waters are stunning. I think it would be hard to leave such a pristine place but it's cool you got to visit. I bet the spiders made you relive childhood, eh? Ick. Cool to see a true Dingo and I'm glad you didn't get carried off like some chunk of meat. Whew. Thanks for sharing the great stories and pictures! Keep 'em coming!