Day 6 - Fraser Island

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I was lulled to sleep last night by the sound of the roaring surf, the cyclonic wind and the rain as it heavily massaged the outside of our tent. There was a lot of lulling time. We are of course at Fraser Island, the home of the, free to roam, Dingo. And roam they do, right into our campsite. There are signs up everywhere about what to do if confronted by this wild dog. What you shouldn’t do is run away waving your arms in the air. Every part of your brain tells you that is exactly what you should do. No, you stand your ground, look it in the eye and fold your arms. That is what I did. I wasn’t going to let this baby snatcher intimidate me. The beast in question completely ignored me and wandered off up the track leaving me standing there looking like a man having a tantrum.

Chris was oblivious to my interaction with the call of the wild as he was dealing with his call of nature……sitting on a bucket. The joys of camping ablutions. This is how our day began. I have to say, however, I was still basking in the glory of a ‘Double letter, Triple word score’ word in the titanic Scrabble battle from the night before. ‘Jeep’ was the gamebreaker that sent me one up in the series.

Today we explored the island. As we are encamped on the Eastern side, we are beholden to the tides as our access is by the beach only. We carefully plan our departure for when the tide is going out and we head for Wanggoolba. This is on the west side and is the location where we will be picking up our Barge to leave the island tomorrow. With the aid of a map that looked like it could have won an art prize in the Euronga kindergarten colouring in competition, we headed inland . We proceeded to negotiate sandy trails dotted with challenging ruts and roots as well as oncoming 4WDs. It was slow going, about 10k an hour, but rewardingly spectacular. After 2 hours of bone jarring, jaw chattering progress we reached our destination. It was disappointingly Spartan. A drop toilet block and a place for campervans to empty out their effluent.

Chris decided to engage the only other person at the Wanggoolba barge station. It soon became apparent that the map that we had was missing a track altogether. Never trust those finger painting classes there tends to be a lack of attention to detail. The missing track ended up being very beneficial for us. It cut our return journey by an hour and led us to the pristine and stunningly beautiful Wanggoolba Creek. This is not actually a creek but an aquafer situated deep under the island. As such the water is so clear that at first glance it looks like a dry creek bed. The undergrowth and surrounding vegetation thrives around it. We sort of stumbled across this as our original intention was to go to this campground as it had showers. “Hey, Chris do you think we need some coins for the Shower?” “No, I checked, all the amenities are included in our booking fee.” On entering the shower block I couldn’t help wondering what the boxes outside each shower cubicle saying $2 coins only. After the cold shower, we headed for Euronga for a few supplies and access to the beach to head back.

As we approached Euronga I noticed something that I had to point out to my fellow traveller. “Look Chris I think that’s a JEEP” I say, pointing to an oncoming vehicle. “That’s J..E..E…P, Jeep.” Back at the campsite we invented a new past time, Windfishing. We baited the imposing beach rods and climbed out of our sheltered campsite. Ignoring the flotsam and jetsam that had been whipped up by the gale force winds and hurtled disturbingly close to our heads, we leant forward into the prevailing winds and headed to the waters’ edge. This will go down in the annals of Chris and Adam’s fishing trips as the shortest on record. When I cast my line into the deep blue ocean and it ended up in the sand behind me, we decided that it was a bit breezy for fishing.



What a day. shaken but not stirred, we settled down a dinner of Steak and Salad. No sign of the Scrabble set. Goodnight.

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