Island life with fish

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Greetings from Fraser Island, Queensdland. It took a bit of an effort to get here, but here we are. The dog sitter didn’t work out, so the girls are in gaol for a couple of days. They thought it was a good idea at the time, because there were other dogs there. I bet they changed their minds when we walked away. When we collect them on Thursday they can go for a long run (or walk) on the beach.

I booked our accommodation and car ferry over the phone and was to receive confirmation by email. After two days without confirmation I rang back to sort it out. Despite Sady, our surname, only having four letters in it, these people managed to get it wrong. They couldn’t find our book initially, and then finally, they found it under Sadey. The woman from National Parks wanted to give us a car permit under the name Fady, and our dinner booking for tonight was booked under the name Fadey. Seriously, how hard can it be, considering I spell it out for everybody phonetically?

If you ever come to Fraser Island, which I recommend you do, don’t buy the coffee on the ferry. We got up at 05:00 to catch the first ferry, so skipped breakfast thinking we would get one on the trip over. I don’t know what it was but after adding three sugars, I still couldn’t kill the taste. Frank took them back to be thrown out. Several other people did too, so it wasn’t just us. Yuk!

Anyway, here we are on this beautiful sand island enjoying the scenery and fishing. Today, Team Sady has finally caught a fish. A 42cm silver trevally is the one and only fish caught the whole time we have been away. As you can imagine, there was much excitement and photo taking. That is tomorrow night’s dinner sorted.

Fraser Island is famous for its dingos. They can be very dangerous, stealing food and babies, attacking people. Only yesterday a dingo somewhere on the island attacked a man. There are warnings signs everywhere about them and how to behave if one approaches you. Today while we were fishing, I saw a dingo wandering around our car, seemingly looking for food. It hung around for a while before moving on. At the same time, we where also visited by two sea eagles. Poor Frank, he couldn’t decide which way to point the camera.

Except for around the resorts, all the roads on the island are sand tracks. Just out from Kingfisher Resort, where we are staying, the track is extremely rough with very deep ruts and holes. To drive on sand, you need to let a lot of the air out of the tyres. We soon found that our tyres hadn’t been deflated enough when we got bogged on a stretch of track with soft sand. Fortunately the problem was easily solved.

Tomorrow will involve more fishing and sight seeing before returning to the mainland in the evening. Fraser Island has changed a great deal since we were here twenty-five years ago. The resorts and shops make the place more civilised without being intrusive into the natural environment. We think we would like to come back for a longer stay next year.

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