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Published: December 8th 2006
The Vic Hislop Great White Shark & Whale Expo!
Despite the art nouveau facade the interior of the facility is late-Victorian.July 17 - 24, 2006
Hervey Bay
Hervey Bay is a nice stretch of little towns along a coast rich with recreational opportunities and diverse sea life. The town rests on a migration route popular with humpback whales, who come up from the Antarctic to birth their young, sharks and dolphins. Not far off the coast lie a pair of jewels, Fraser Island and Lady Elliot Island, easily reached from Hervey Bay. The area has grown from 15,000 to 55,000 residents in the last 15 years but retains the feel of a very small community (albeit one frequently overrun with tourists).
We stumbled into a nice motel, the Hervey Bay Motel, owned and operated by an accommodating and informative proprietor named Glynn. Glynn happily suggested a few places in town to eat and helped us to book a whale watching tour and a day trip to nearby Fraser Island (he’d have happily booked our tour to Lady Elliot as well but we had booked the trip on our own earlier).
As we intended to spend some time at Lady Elliot and Fraser Island we used Hervey Bay primarily as a jumping off point (clearly a common itinerary
A Humpback Whale Tail
We took 435 shots of splashes just to get this one image. Whales may be mammals but they are not great models. as the hustle from various agents to book tours was far greater than we had experienced elsewhere in the country). After pulling into town on a rainy afternoon we visited one of the area’s more colorful attractions, the Vic Hislop Great White Shark & Whale Expo. It is worth mentioning that on the brochure the boldest, largest word is “shark” and that “& whale expo” seems to have been added as an afterthought. Prior to the Australian ban on fishing for great white sharks Hislop was an aggressive and prolific hunter. We had heard a good deal about him from our friend from Brisbane whose family knows Hislop and so we stopped by his attraction.
The expo consists of two rooms full of articles and displays extolling the evils of the 1% of sharks that are considered “maneaters,” particularly the great whites, and two rooms running Hislop’s documentaries (one of which includes a vivid examination of the contents of a dead great white’s stomach, which included turtle shells and a dolphin skull). A giant freezer at the facility also keeps a whole, 3,000 pound, great white preserved, frozen solid, and lit in a manner appropriate for nightmares. Vic Hislop
hates the big sharks and believes that they are responsible for far more human deaths than they are given credit for (to an almost laughable extent, displaying articles of probable drownings and disappearances near the ocean exclusively on sharks). He blames government fishing policies for driving large sharks to prey on baby whales and he even thinks sharks are responsible for driving whales in to shallow waters, fleeing the sharks for shallow waters where they cannot live. Hislop’s righteousness and his ongoing war with the government over the protection of the big sharks may take center stage at the museum but it makes for a unique, entertaining show and a fun hour.
Our second day in town, July 18th, we signed up for a half day whale watching cruise for $89 AUD each. Our visit to Hervey Bay coincided with the very earliest part of whale watching season as the whales move along the east coast of Australia to warmer waters to mate and to give birth. Some 2,000 whales make the 6,000 kilometer migration and most will have left Queensland waters by October. The Hervey Bay Marine Park rests just off shore between the coast and Fraser Island,
the body of water providing ideal conditions for whales, sea turtles, sea birds, sea grasses, and dugongs (manatees).
Even with the whales established migration route, sonar, and radio connecting the boat to others out searching for whales, the early part of the cruise is essentially spent zig-zagging around the area where whales were spotted the previous day. The whales were very cooperative this day and we saw a total of four humpbacks, two very closely, and we witnessed a variety of dramatic behaviors from very close up. Two moments in particular stand out, first when a large whale swam directly at and under our boat, clearly illuminated by a rare patch of sunlight in the perfectly clear water, and second when a whale performed a “spy hop” next to the ship (a spy hop is when a whale noses its head straight up out of the water to peek at the excitable, photo-happy tourists). After witnessing a good amount of tail and pectoral slapping and some breaching by the playful whales our captain decided to back away to allow another boat within the legally permissible distance around the whales and we headed to shore. We were very fortunate to
Our Plane And The Lady Elliot Ground Crew
And yes, that grassy pasture is the runway. see the variety of activities that we did and the captain of the boat seemed genuinely surprised to have such a good run at this time of the season.
Lady Elliot Island (July 19 - 22)
Our first off-shore excursion from Hervery Bay was a visit to Lady Elliot Island. Lady Elliot is a coral island reef that first popped up above the surface of the water about 3,500 years ago as a coral rubble sea spit. The island was officially discovered in 1816 by Captain Thomas Stewart. Until tourism became a draw in 1969 the island was really only used as a station for a lighthouse and for the vastly more sexy industry of guano mining (apparently enough sea birds crapped on Lady Elliott that from 1863 to 1874 this was a profitable venture - and you’d probably just throw it away).
The island is located about 80 km from Australia at the southern most point of the Great Barrier Reef. While we were staying in Hervey Bay we had looked at a number of possibilities including Fraser Island, the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. Our guidebook mentions about five places from which to
The Coral That Makes Up Lady Elliot Island
Note quite a soft-between-your-toes kind of beach but lovely all the same. see the Great Barrier Reef and we had planned on seeing it from Cairns, the most popular jumping off point for reef tours due to its proximity, but we had been warned that the high number of tourists had resulted in a good deal of damage to the reef.. Most of the other places to see the Reef appeared to be much more exclusive (but also more expensive) and so we weren’t hopeful at going to one of these places.
During our research we found that the Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort, the only resort on Lady Elliot Island, was running winter specials until July 31 and their rates were about 40% of usual. We called on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning we were at the airport waiting for our flight to Lady Elliot Island. As we may have mentioned before, Amy does not like flying but she was looking forward to seeing the Reef from the plane. She has also adjusted to taking small planes (somewhat), most recently one with about 30 seats to get to our wedding in Loreto, Mexico. That “not worried” feeling quickly dissipated, however, as we walked on to the tarmac at the Hervey
Reef Walking Amy
We were free to walk among the coral as long as we did not touch it. The high winds made the walking stick a welcome addition to our gear. Bay airport. Much like when the Three Stooges bought a race horse, finding after the transaction that a saggy old mare was concealed by a horse blanket, we walked toward a good-sized thirty seat plane only to find the little 13-seater behind it was to be our ride. There was no flight crew, save the pilot, who instructed us to buckle our seatbelts and how to use the floatation devices. Although Roger would have loved to have snagged the seat next to the pilot, Amy needed him to sit next to her so that she could hold on to him for dear life.
The flight was fairly short (about 25-30 minutes) and surprisingly smooth when we were up at our cruising altitude. It was amazing to see Lady Elliot from the sky, a green speck surrounded by rings of coral, and admire the different colors in the shallow sea around the island. The winds were quite strong and so the approach to the grass runway in the middle of the island was quite bumpy and extremely terrifying for Amy, but we made it and Amy’s legs even managed to work after disembarking. Not really understanding how small the island
Reef Walking Roger
The yellow scopes are tubes with clear plastic at one end. They provide surprisingly clear views of the coral and our feet. was, we had wondered about the logistics of getting from the airport to the resort. Our plane was met on the runway by the activities director who led us the 50 yards across the landing strip to the entrance to the resort and then took us on a short tour. The resort is very casual and the island is tiny. The rooms don’t have TV or radios and there is no internet and the only phone is a satellite phone that would have been quite pricey.
The resort is obviously very remote and so they rely on a barge from the mainland for virtually everything, including fuel for the generators, boats and the small handful of vehicles. Food and drinks as well as clean laundry come along with guests on the daily plane. The resort generates its own electricity and clean water. There are about 30 staff members and they work 20 days on with 8 days off during which they must fly off the island. We thought it sounded like a pretty fun place to work while you are young except for the lack of television and takeout (the only food is in the one restaurant on the
island).
The resort is very small and intimate and we think it has space for about 100 guests. As it was the slow season there were probably around 30 guests during our stay. It’s very quiet and you don’t see too many other guests except at mealtimes. Among the multi-day guests on the island with us were a group we affectionately referred to as “The Others,” who resembled the castaways from Lost and were even led by an odd, barrel-chested, bearded man, a man who looked exactly like the murderous Paul Young from Desperate Housewives (who was with his son), and a lovely woman from Scotland who was showing her two pre-teen daughters the wonders of Australia. We enjoyed talking with Andrea quite a bit even though her family did not resemble characters from a hit ABC drama.
The island would seem to have a quiet feel even when it is completely full. There is plenty of space to wander and the beaches, though composed entirely of good sized chunks of dead coral, are pretty isolated. When the television stars came together it was generally just for meals. Buffet breakfast and dinner are included in the price but
lunch is not included and you have a choice of a buffet or a limited bar menu (targeted pretty squarely at the day trippers who fly over for some snorkeling and back in the evening). We ordered off of the menu everyday for lunch and the food was pretty good. At breakfast we stuck to the continental breakfast items because we just haven’t gotten into the spaghetti on toast delicacy of our Aussie friends. The highlights of the dinner buffet were the desserts and the friendly banter of one of the cooks.
The weather was disappointing for much of our stay at Lady Elliott. The water temperature remained nice, around 70 degrees, and the sun was out quite a bit, but the wind seemed never ending. All in all not bad weather for the middle of winter, but our hope to sun bathe on our deck or enjoy our meals outside was instead spent inside relaxing (a hearty tribulation, to be sure). We played many games of ping pong and decided that we may have to get a table when we get back because it’s pretty addictive (one of us is a poor winner).
The resort offers a
...Roger Exploring The Reef Another Way
Glass-bottom boats make the ocean less wet. reef education center that has a lot of different information about the island, the reef and the animals that inhabit it. It also houses a few fish tanks where they rotate through animals that they find in the water allowing a better look of some of the more squirmy and spiny occupants of the reef. At peak season we are sure that the tv and vcr/dvd library, swimming pool and games are all delights for families.
The real attraction here, of course, is the Great Barrier Reef, available for view in two ways, reef walks and snorkeling from a boat just off shore. As Roger is not keen on swimming the opportunity to walk among the formations of the reef in shallow water without having to snorkel made this destination very appealing. Despite the wind we did enjoy a reef walk each day, wading out on the crushed coral (resembling sand) and peeking through plastic tubes resembling periscopes at the coral and coral life. The island’s coral is teeming with life, from the tiny coral to a variety of sea cucumbers, starfish, and trilobite-like shellfish. Like the rest of Australia the reef at Lady Elliott was not without its
venomous residents, in this case a sea snail that resides in a conical shell that is capable of spearing a potential predator with a dart and venom for which there is no antidote. The danger of the snail is very real and, even though we did not encounter it, we feel it is worth mentioning as it makes us sound very hearty and brave.
The second afternoon we were on the island we caught the glass-bottom boat at the far end of the island and went about 100 yards off-shore for snorkeling. The depth and diversity of the reef in this area, called Coral Gardens, is hard to believe, resembling an underwater jungle more than anything rocky or mountainous. Amy flippered her way around the boat, gazing at the plate, branching, boulder and columnar corals, massive sea cucumbers, and sea turtles. The glass-bottom was enough snorkeling for Roger.
Fraser Island (July 23)
After our stay at Lady Elliott we returned to Hervey Bay and relaunched for a day trip to Fraser Island. The Aussies say that eventually all of the sand in eastern Australia ends up at Fraser Island, a believable theory when you see the 123
Our Ride
The Fraser Island Company 4x4 bus. kilometer long sand bar. Over the years the sand, swept away by the currents and deposited here has added up, creating the largest sand bar in the world. Fraser’s unique composition has earned it a designation as a UN World Heritage Site (ranking it with Uluru, Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef). The island is roughly 700,000 years old and, except for three rocky points, composed entirely of sand. The core of the island contains fresh water which keeps the island from being eroded by the sea. Despite the lack of paved roads, shark infested shore line that makes swimming impossible, and tight restrictions on visitors to the island some 300,000-400,000 people visit Fraser each year.
There is evidence to suggest that Aboriginals populated Fraser Island starting some five thousand years ago and that at the time of the arrival of Europeans their permanent population was stable at around 500, swelling during the winter (prime seafood season) to as many as 3,000. While there is some evidence to suggest Portuguese and Dutch explorers reached Fraser earlier, Captain Cook first sighted the island in May 1770. Had Cook not believed the island to be part of the mainland he might
have been more excited by the discovery. The island takes its name from Captain James Fraser whose ship, the Sterling Castle, was shipwrecked here in 1836. During the six weeks the survivors were stranded on the island “hostilities” developed between the Europeans and the Aboriginals. Tales of this six week odyssey, which was survived by Captain Fraser’s wife, Eliza, vary in their degrees of horror and drama and may be worth looking up even though we were warned about wild variations in the tales.
We signed up for a tour with “100% Aussie owned and operated” The Fraser Island Company who collected us from our motel at 8 am. We took the tour company’s ferry, The Fraser Dawn, across the Great Sandy Strait, spotting a humpback whale surprisingly near the harbor as we began (the folks here are careful to manage the expectations of visitors seeking whales, especially at this time of year, but as far as we can tell the place is lousy with whales). Our tour group had 16 people, including a German family, 3 older Aussie couples, 1 couple a little younger than us from Ireland, and a pair of insufferably annoying 18 year old girls
from England.
Fraser’s sand (and the law) demands that only four-wheel drive vehicles be used on the island. Our guide and our vehicle, a stocky little bus on steroids, were awaiting our arrival at Moon Point. The guide had a considerable amount of experience having driven Fraser full-time for five years as a guide before going part-time on the weekends (he and his wife began to focus more on their sewing machine repair shop during the week). Plowing in to the island’s interior on roads of deep sand was a lot of fun. We could feel the bus roar into the sand and the occasional slip and churn of the wheels as they struggled for purchase and our driver expertly navigated the narrow twists and turns.
From Moon Point the bumpy road began to look like a Jurassic Park ride, wild with vegetation and surreal in its serenity. We were to cross the middle of the island from west to east driving about 25 kilometers. Along the way we made a visit to Lake Allom where we watched fresh water turtles paddling in the shallows. The Fraser Island Company is one of a handful of operators on the
75 Mile Beach
Aussie highway laws apply here. Even to the aircraft that land and take off from the beach. In the distance you can see a plane and an truck preparing to race. island but the only one to visit Lake Allom. Despite the cold temperature of the air and water the two English girls went for a swim. This was lovely for us as the bright little starlets were without towels and able to bitch the rest of the day as to how cold they were.
Lake Allom, like many of the lakes on Fraser, is a “perched dune lake,” meaning the lake rests on a bed of vegetation shed from the trees and bushes on the island. Layers of dead leaves on the bottom of the lakes keep the water from seeping through the sand. This precarious balance is best illustrated by the consequences of a recent drought when a wild fire reached a dry lake bed and burned away the layer of leaves. Where there once was a lake there is now simply a dry flora covered depression in an otherwise unremarkable wooded area.
We exited on the east side of the island at 75 Mile Beach, technically a part of Australia’s Highway 1. You have to be very careful on the beach as you are likely to encounter landing planes, helicopters, cars coming in each direction, plus
people darting out to fish or see stuff. Though the island has a speed limit for all roads of 35 kilometers an hour you are free to cruise 75 Mile Beach at up to 80. The vastness of Fraser’s beaches, particularly the wide, seemingly endless 75 Mile Beach, really illustrate the uniqueness of the island. This ribbon of sand separates churning waves rich with sea life (the big stuff, too - humpbacks, great whites, Nemo) from dense, tropical rainforest just 200 meters above the waves.
In the logging heyday there used to be 2,000 kilometers of road on Fraser though today only about 1000 kilometers are maintained. Logging started in 1860 but featured sophisticated and far-thinking methods that probably saved the island from being completely barren. The loggers divided the island into parcels of 10,000 trees and within each parcel they would only take 150 trees every ten years. Not only did we not see any evidence of logging but the bulk of the island appeared to be virgin jungle and devoid of human tracks (a remarkable feat considering the number of visitors and the fact that there are some residences and commercial sites that were grandfathered in).
We drove by the evocatively named Knifeblade, a long stretch of sand called a “sand blow,” but didn’t get a great look at it because it was covered by a wall of rainforest. Our next stop was Coloured Sands, a clay-like cliff face that contained striations of different colors. The cliff face is protected from visitors by a fence that, judging from the foot prints and a happy face in the sandy cliffside, is not terribly effective.
Our little 4x4 chugged uphill and into a camping reserve, Fraser’s at Cathedral Beach, where our driver prepared a tasty grilled lunch for us. We each had steak, salad and pasta, free beer, wine and soda, plus a cheese plate. We like to rough it. This was the first time of the day where people really interacted (other than the tarts who could not shut about about being cold, drunk, or boy crazy) and we enjoyed our group.
After lunch we visited the shipwrecked Maheno, a luxury Tasmanian cruise ship that was being towed to Japan when a cyclone drove it onto the beach north of Eli Creek. The massive hull of the ship, a skeletal, rusty behemoth half sunken in
the sand, was very cool but also very crowded. If we have a gripe about our tour it would be that we only spent 10 minutes at the Maheno but 25 (which stretched to 35 because of the English twits) earlier at Lake Allom and 20 minutes at out next stop, Eli Creek. Eli Creek is essentially just a shallow stretch of fresh water running from the inland lakes to the sea and it was packed with people wading. The 80 million liters of crystal clear, fresh water that empties into the ocean each day is nice, particularly when mobbed by tubby, pasty, tourists, but not more fun than a shipwreck.
As we drove up the beach between the wreck of the Maheno and Eli Creek we got to see a dingo meandering across the beach. Dingoes are serious business on Fraser as they basically have the run of the island. The dog-like appearance of the animals, particularly out on the open beach, is deceiving, though, as there was a person killed in 2001. Probably a shivering English girl trying to pet the pooch. The island’s other resident wildlife includes 5 of Australia’s 7 deadliest snakes, carpet pythons, and
Dingoes Can Open Ice Boxes!
They can also hunt, scavenge, stalk, and make little dingoes if you respect their privacy. more toxic spiders than one would like to consider. The most unique residents are Fraser’s feral horses left over from the days of logging. The horses, called brumbys, are tough on the landscape and were candidates for culling not too long ago. As the authorities prepared to cull the brumbys they found that the high amounts of sand the horses were consuming was effectively killing them anyway and that their numbers would steadily decrease to zero naturally.
We made one more stop at Fraser Island Wilderness Retreat for tea, coffee and some sweets, providing us time to talk with the Irish couple in our group. They had just spent 2 weeks in New Zealand and loved it which made us very excited for our next destination.
After tea we stopped at Yidney Rainforest where our driver dropped us off so that we could walk about a kilometer and enjoy the peace and scenery of the forest. The forest was exactly what we thought of when we imagined a rain forest, though we would never have expected to find it on the spine of a sand bar. In keeping with their form the British boobs strayed, walking way ahead
of the bus and forcing our driver to catch up and find them. We made our way back to Moon Point to take the ferry back to Hervey Bay.
Aside from a small child that seemed overly fascinated with Roger on the ride back the day wound down uneventfully and shortly after sunset we were back in our cozy motel room enjoying some fast food from an Aussie chicken chain.
We enjoyed the Fraser Island excursion a lot. The island is unique but some of the sights weren’t too impressive. We had wrestled with whether to spend the night on the island as a part of a longer tour. As it ended up we were happy we did the day trip over the other options, particularly the one where you are randomly paired with other backpackers and sent on your way with a vehicle (that you are responsible for). Our driver’s expertise on the sand, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the island, was appreciated. At $169 AUD/person visiting Fraser Island is an expensive proposition but a trip that we would recommend.
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