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Published: December 15th 2015
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So this morning I woke up with a very hungry tummy after Last nights fabulous dinner of samurai selection - kind of like a Chinese selection prawn toast etc then I had king prawns in a white wine sauce whilst the hubs had lasagne chips and salad (not very exotic - but a change from a burger haha!) and apparently wasn't a patch on his mums!!
So today we went to Fraser Island thinking of breakfast, to which there was none for me as I don't eat cheese!! So I had a snickers!! Healthy! Anyway! Off we went to Fraser Island, please excuse my mass of jumble to follow - I tried to remember all the things the guide told us so it may be a bit random as my brain remembers stuff! .....
Fraser Island is the Largest island made of sand (I think in the world ?!) that over millions of years has been built up by currents in the sea hitting the land near Sydney from a south easterly direction bouncing north east from the valleys in the blue mountains (no longer sea there) in Sydney and stopped from going any further north by the great barrier
reef. Interestingly though it isn't actually an island it is part of the main land at ice age point apparently! Interesting!
Fraser island has some unique Trees, the Fraser Island saturnay, which Was for over 100 years felled from Fraser Island to make boat masts and pylons etc as it grows very straight and is very strong! This is due to the 'soil' it grows in being 98% sand silica which means a little beasty that lives in the sea called 'The marina bora' can't chew it - result for boats! One of said trees is 800 years old!! They only Grow here and Noosa! All of this deforestation stopped in 1992 so that the island could because a heritage site! Hurrah!
Another tree is the hoop tree - named as such as the tree grows and it looks like it has hoops round it - and when it's dead or branches drop of the wood rots much faster inside so leaves the hardier bark in a hoop shape! Wow! Haha!
On Fraser Island there are 200 lakes and there are 3 types of lake... (Didn't even know there were different types!!) check that out!
-Window lakes
These are mainly on the western side of the Island, which is a low lying hole in the ground which is lower than the water table level creating said lake.
-Barrage lake
A lake made by a naturally formed damn where a sand dune has blown in, in the case on he island at 1m per year but where more sand is blowing in still its filling the lake it created - researchers predict this particular lake will be gone end of this century!
-perched sand dune lake
Such as lake Mckenzie, which we visited (beautiful) which is high on top of something in this case on top of sand dune of which there are only 80 in the world! 40 of them on Fraser Island!!
Lake Mckenzie Was Made by wind blowing and making a crater type dip, in the crater things of the vegetation variety grew and as these things do, also died off! Said dead forestry over time formed a layer to keep rain water in the crater creating the lake!
Very few creatures can live in this lake due to the acidity levels of the rain water, many other lakes are formed by years of water flowing through various rocks etc providing minerals for creatures - as this hasn't happened they can't survive!
We were lucky enough to see 2 of the creatures that life there little fishes that are called purple spotted 'something' and little crayfish! 😊
Frazier island is 123k long 15k wide but 22km at its widest!
The Ground being all sand acts like a sponge, it holds 15km wide of water, if you think of it like a pyramid sloping down to the sea from the centre of the island it rains inland and at the edges creeks form for the water to flow out of to the sea, of fresh water! This also takes place up to 25km out from beachline under the sea! This process takes 80-100 to filter through.
The locals or inhabitants of the island have to take a mineral supplement as the water is so pure here!
If you have a 4x4 you Can drive full the full 123kn on east side or the 75 mile beach side but the west is mostly forest and creeks too deep to pass through!
On the island a Shipwreck, the maheno is located. This ship was Made in Scotland and sailed to various place throughout the world. In the early 1900's
A New Zealand company 'unite' (or something) bought the ship and soon after that New Zealand as a country converted it to a hospital ship for ww1! After its service it was returned to unite then Bought by the Japanese to demolish for scrap value in 1935!
They made 2 mistakes in doing so, the first was their plan to tow it with a smaller ship to save money on coal as it was a steamship which was crazy as it still worked!
The second was they took the props off to make it lighter to tow! Unfortunately on the way from NZ to Japan they ran into cyclone which broke tow cable. They tried a few times to fix the tow but this failed and it got washed on to the beach and it stayed there as they gave up on it!
I've probably bored you to death now but we had a fab time!
We also got to have a paddle in Eli creek which was surprisingly really cold! We saw Dingos! Loads of them (well not all at once) but quite a few which our guide said was quite unusual! 3 of them were babies which were born in August time and out learning to do what dingos do! We also paddled in lake Mckenzie which as I said was beautiful! We got back about 6pm showered changed and went for dinner!
I had more huge prawns this time in a chilli and paprika white wine sauce and guess what hubster had....!!
Anyway now is the time of sleeping!
Nunite to all and to all Nunite!!
Xxx
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