Fraser Island (21 - 28 April)

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We left Glass House Mountains Tourist Village reasonably early but we stopped in Gympie to re-supply diesel and a few odds and ends. We arrived at Rainbow Beach around 1 pm but it took about half an hour to organise our access permit, camping fees and barge ticket. By the time we got to Inskip Point it was getting close to 2 pm. We made the mistake of trying to get across the soft sand on the way to the barge without letting our tyres down, so we didn't get very far before getting bogged! But once we let the tyre pressures down to about 20 PSI we didn't have any problems. I later inflated the tyres to 25 PSI as this pressure worked well and I was a bit worried about running them off their rims. It was only a short 10 minute barge trip across to Hook Point on the southern tip of Fraser Island. Low tide was at 1134 and high at 1715, so we had thought we might need to take the inland route from Hook Point to the eastern beach which ends about 5 km south of Dilli Village. From Dilli Village we could take the inland track to Central Station where we had booked five nights camping. However, when we left the barge the other four vehicles began travelling along the beach, so we followed suit. As we set off, a woman in a 4WD coming the other way and about to hop onto the barge, yelled out that we shouldn't waste any time as there were some large waves rolling onto the shore. There was a deep low pressure system off the coast that had been generating large waves along the southeast coast of Qld for some time. This had caused a fair bit of erosion along the east coast of Fraser Island, especially in the north - apparently it had caused the track to Sandy Cape to be impassable just past Ocean Lake.

Anyway, we followed our adopted convoy of vehicles along the beach but had to travel very cautiously with waves occasionally making their way right up to the bank. A couple of times we had to drive through shallow water from these waves. A bit further up the coast it became even worse and one of the vehicles ahead of us got swamped by a large wave. By this time Alex was starting to wet her knickers! We were able to time our advances along the shore between waves so didn't have too many problems, but further on it got even hairier when the width of the shore narrowed. This happened just after we had passed a track that cut from the beach to meet up with the inland track that we had originally planned to take. With the tide coming in and conditions deteriorating, everyone decided to take this diversion inland. We had a bit of 'fun' getting from the beach up the steep sandy track across the dunes and in the end we were 'snatched' up the final bit of the slope by a fellow Landcruiser. We had nearly made it but lost traction near the top and I later discovered that it was because I did not have the Traction Control System disabled - when the wheels began losing grip on the sand, the TCS tried to give traction to the other wheels and so took power away from some of them, which just caused the car to stop abruptly in the soft sand. At least that is what I think was happening. Something similar happened with another steep sandy 'jump-up' later on in the trip, but when I disabled the TCS, I had no problems getting up the steep slope. Another 4WD in our adopted convoy towing a camper trailer also had to be snatched up this slope, so I didn't feel so bad, especially once I had worked out what had caused it.

We made our way on the inland track but when we arrived at the beach again conditions seemed to be getting worse and the group that we had adopted decided it was too dangerous to continue along the beach that day. One vehicle up ahead had pressed on and later on we found out from them that it wasn't actually too bad and that we had already passed the worst of it. But we didn't know that at the time and decided to play it safe and stick with the main convoy. We back-tracked a little along the inland track to camp at Dulara, a bush camp with only a few spots and no facilities. Thomas was most excited because it the first time ever that we had no toilet facilities, so he got to use the makeshift hole that I dug about a metre deep. He had several goes on the short-drop, as he called it, but didn't have any success until the following morning! It was a nice spot nestled in the scrub behind the first row of dunes, so we had quite a loud background noise of the waves crashing onto the shore. We also found out later that, had we made it to Central Station, we would have had background noise of a much less desirable nature with a couple of groups of rowdy backpackers playing drinking games with their 'doof-doof' music blaring until 1am. This was despite the signs warning No noise after 9pm. $150 minimum fine.

The next morning (Wednesday), we headed off on our own around 0930 - the rest of the convoy was going to wait another hour or so, closer to the low-tide time of 1203 before travelling along the beach. Yet we didn't have any problems driving along the beach, although we had to time our travel across a few sections to coincide with receding water from large waves. When we arrived at Dilli Village we decided to take the inland Southern Lakes Scenic Drive, although in hindsight it would have been quicker to continue along the beach and take the inland track from Eurong to Central Station. The scenic drive passed by Lake Boomanjin, the largest perched lake in the world - a perched lake “develops when a saucer shaped 'hard pan' of organic debris, sand and peat forms in a depression between dunes. Water collects, slowly filtering to the water table below”. We also drove past Lake Benaroon and stopped to have a look at the crystal clear waters of Lake Birrabeen, which were in stark contrast to the tannin coloured waters of Lake Boomanjin.

We read later that this scenic drive was not recommended for vehicles towing trailers or camper trailers, but we didn't have too many troubles. The track was a bit steep and rutted in parts with a few exposed tree roots and one of these caused a bit more damage to our left hand sidestep (first damaged at Croajingalong National Park near Mallacoota in SE Victoria). It may have also caused a small ding at the base of the front left wheel arch, although this may have occurred the following day (read on).

After setting up camp at Central Station we had a couple of visits from Lace Monitors scavenging for food, but none of them were aggressive in any way, unlike the Monitor at The Grandis in NSW - see our Watagans and Myall Lakes (13-17 March) blog entry. We walked to Central Station picnic area and completed the short Wanggoolba Creek Circuit Walk as well as learning a bit about the history of Fraser Island from the information display. The camp ground was relatively full on Wednesday night with quite a few groups of backpackers. Apparently the poor conditions on the coast had forced many of them to head inland. Hence, we were anticipating a rowdy night in the camp ground, but a heavy downpour around 9 pm seemed to quieten them all down for the night.

On Thursday, we drove to Lake McKenzie in the morning, another large perched lake with crystal clear waters and a white sandy beach. After a short swim here we headed back on the main track to Central Station and then to Eurong on the east coast. We then travelled north along the beach with our aim to get as far as the Maheno ship wreck. The waves were still quite large on the trip to the Maheno, but we timed our travel so that we crossed Eli Creek, just south of the Maheno, near low tide, so didn't have any problems. On the way back we stopped at Eli Creek and Annelies and Thomas enjoyed playing and floating in the shallow water there. We then travelled back to Eurong and it was along this trip that we may have incurred the small ding mentioned previously - the trip involved several areas of exposed rocks (McLaughlan Rocks, Chard Rocks and Yidney Rocks) with a few short 'jump-ups' and it was one of these (or rather a 'jump-down') when we hit a rock and may have caused the ding. I say may because it was so small we only noticed it a few days later and we're not exactly sure when it occurred. From Eurong we travelled back to our base camp at Central Station.

On Friday we drove to Kingfisher Bay on the western side of the island. We had our picnic lunch here and then made use of the resort's 'Day Visitor Pavilion', which consisted of a bistro and in-ground pool, although only Annelies and Thomas made use of the pool with its freezing cold water. From Kingfisher Bay we drove to Lake Wabby via part of the Central Lakes Scenic Drive. Lake Wabby is the deepest lake on Fraser Island and a barrage lake, which forms “when a mobile sand dune dams a watercourse”. Afterwards we drove to the beach and then south to Eurong where we called Qld Parks and Wildlife and booked another couple of nights camping at Dundubara in the north.

On Saturday we spent most of the day at Central Station camp ground although we drove to Lake Birrabeen again in the afternoon for a lovely swim, play and lie down on the white sandy beach.

On Sunday we packed up our camp at Central Station, headed to Eurong and then north along the beach towards Dundubara. We did this with just a little bit of trepidation due to the areas of exposed rock that we would have to traverse again, but this time with the camper trailer in tow. However, we had no dramas at all. The worst area was at McLaughlan Rocks and we ended up following another 4WD up the 'jump-up'. This vehicle lost a bit of traction and did a little slip, but we had no problems in 1st gear low range 4WD with the centre differential locked. The trailer also cleared the rocks without a problem. We stopped off at Eli Creek again where we had lunch and another swim. We also stopped briefly at The Pinnacles, had a sticky-beak at the privately run Frasers at Cathedral Rocks, and then pulled into Dundubara camping area. This was situated about 100m behind the dunes and a similar camp ground to Central Station (showers, toilets and washing up facilities). The main differences were that Dundubara had fewer backpackers, hot water washing up facilities, flushing toilets and fire rings. After setting up camp we walked up to Wungul Sandblow which began about a kilometre or so behind the camp ground. When we got there we decided to walk up to the highest point, which was about another kilometre up the dunes, and then we figured we may as well complete the 5.5 km circuit walk. Just as we neared the dingo proof fence surrounding our camp ground, we noticed dingo tracks, which was our first evidence of dingos on the island. To date, we had seen none.

On Monday we drove up north from Dundubara, stopping briefly at Red Canyon, Indian Head and Champagne Pools. We drove into Orchid Beach and then along the beach to Waddy Point, where we parked the car and walked out to the point. Afterwards, Mark and the children had a go at sand surfing down the dunes using boogie boards, but the dunes weren't quite steep enough. Annelies did manage to toboggan down the dunes a little while Thomas just had lots of fun running up and down them. We had lunch at the day use area near the Waddy Point Top Camp Ground and then went back down to the beach for a swim in the shallow channel caused by the low tide. Back at the camp ground we had a great night sitting around the camp fire with a few other groups of campers, including a family who we had come over on the ferry with and had been camped at Central Station with us. We used the camp fire to toast marshmallows and also made a couple of batches of scones.

We had originally thought that we'd only stay at Dundubara for two nights, but as we were having such a good time there, we thought we'd stay another night. So on Tuesday we drove to the Knifeblade Sandblow lookout on the Northern Forests Scenic Drive and then to Lake Allom where we saw lots of turtles and also did the short 1.4 km circuit walk around the lake. We had morning tea at the picnic area and then drove back to the beach and down to Eli Creek once again. This time we walked along the board walk and came back via the creek, which was a bit cold but good fun. When we got back to the beach at the end of the creek we had our first sighting of a Fraser Island dingo. The dingo sat at the base of a sand dune for several minutes, just watching all the activity happening at Eli Creek, and then wandered off up the beach. We had lunch and spent a few hours at Eli Creek and also got to see a light aircraft take off and land a few times taking people on joy flights. We also got out our stunt kite and enjoyed playing with that for a while. On the way back to Dundubara and a few kilometres north of the Maheno, we spotted another dingo resting on the sand bank watching the cars drive past. Apparently there are only about 200 dingos left on the island and up until that day it was looking like we might not see any, but now we had seen two. Back at the camp ground we had another camp fire and christened our new jaffle maker, which we'd purchased in Brisbane. It worked well and then we made a decent sized damper that everyone got to taste, including a French family camped nearby.

On Wednesday we packed up and managed to get away quite early, around 0830. Low tide was at 0529 and high at 1101, so we knew that it was not the best time to be travelling to Hook Point - it would be getting close to high tide by the time we got there to hop back on the barge. The tides were not extremely high and we thought we'd leave anyway, knowing that we could always take the inland road if it got too hairy. Fortunately the large waves that we had encountered on our trip in were no longer there and it turned out that the only area where the water was coming right up to the vehicle was on the last stretch. So we waited for the barge, hopped back on it and returned to Inskip Point, inflated our tyres and drove into the car wash at Rainbow Beach.

We had a superb time at Fraser Island with it's exciting sandy 4WD tracks and beach driving, crystal clear lakes, sand blows, coastal scenery and camping in good company. It will go down as one of the highlights of our trip around OZ.

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Photos

Maheno
Alex & Annelies about to get swamped

Lake McKenzie
Crystal clear water

Heading inland
Must remember to disable traction control next time!

Lake Boomanjin
Check the tannin coloured water

Lake Birrabeen, Southern Forests Scenic Drive
Crystal clear water