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Published: February 3rd 2006
They look like angels don't they?
They've just been exfoliating with the sand of Lake MacKenzie. That's Lauren, Sarah, Helen, Ele and DaveFraser island is lovely and as our tour guide (Ranger Rob) pointed out often is a natural phenomenon. We went on a 3 day guided tour here with the cool dingo tour company and had a great time.
Fraser island is the largest sand island in the world, approximately 124km by 15 km and required 4 x 4 buses to get us around. It is comprised entirely of sand apart from three rock formations(Indian head being one of these). It has a large aqua firm (water table) and has many natural fresh water lakes and creeks. The island is constantly changing (gradually) as more sand is deposited apparently coming up from antartica. It is unique also because of the amount of life it supports as it has two nutrient layers. Its home to several poisonous species of snake and spider as well as birds and Dingo's. We only saw the birds and the dingo's though. This tour whilst interesting, did turn out to be mostly a swimming holiday rather than anything else! However we did have fun and met lots of interesting people. The water in all the lakes was drinkable even in lake mackenzie which has a ph of
5.2. You would not want to drink lake mackenzies water though as most people go there and use the sand to exfoliate their skin as recommended by the tour guides! Whilst on the tour we listened to australian classics such as "come to australia, you might accidently get killed", "we're all gonna die someday", a male version of that Meredith Brookes song "I'm a Bloke" which is enough to put anyone off dating australian men and that classic song by men at work "I come from a land down under".
These are the places we visited on the tour and a bit about what we got up to, I'm not sure the photo's do it justice as the weather was a bit dull whilst we were there but I think they speak for themselves
Day one: Basin lake, Pile valley walk, Lake mackenzie, Central station (the logging station)
Day two: Meheno Shipwreck, 20 minute scenic flight $60 (25 pounds), Coloured sand rocks*, climb up Indian head, Eli Creek, Ocean beach
Day three: Lake Wabby, Walk across large sandblow, Lake Birrabeen
* The Aborigini legend of the coloured sand rocks goes a little something like this
- a girl is engaged to a man she does not love who is a legendary hunter and boomerang thrower. The man she loves is a rainbow whom she often talks to on the beach. One day her fiancee comes and sees her talking to the rainbow and is very angry and tries to murder her with his boomerang, however the rainbow throws himself in front of her and as he is hit there is an explosion of colour and that is how the coloured sand rocks were formed.
If you go to Fraser island just be careful when crossing roads/ walking on the beach as 4 x 4's zip up and down - apparently a couple of weeks before we came some tourists laid down in the access road to the beach at night time and had pretty much every bone in their bodies broken. I was glad we took the tour as the alternative was 4x4 camping with a bunch of strangers, although driving a 4x4 around there probably would have been fun if there was no one else on the roads! We did have to dig out the 4x4 bus on the beach though as it
Lake Birrabeen
We saw this on the third day, the photo doesn't do it justice. Apparently the walking with dinosaurs crew were doing some filming here the day we visited but we missed them lost forward drive and help a few 4x4's out that got stuck on the roads.
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