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Published: January 25th 2010
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Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island
Jan 16th - Jan 19th We chose to depart for Fraser Island from Rainbow Beach instead of the more popular starting point of Hervey Bay. The last time I backpacked Australia I left for Fraser from Hervey Bay so thought it would be good to see somewhere different. It turned out to be a good decision as Rainbow Beach is magical. It is hands down our favourite beach so far outside of Western Australia. The sea is clear and warm and thankfully jellyfish-free while there is miles of sand to lay out on. We spent a great day sunbathing and cooling off in the ocean letting the giant waves pick us up and throw us about.
Rainbow Beach is so-called because of giant multi-coloured sand cliffs that jut out from the beach. We went for a walk along the beach which is also a highway so 4x4 vehicles are allowed to drive along the sand which is a bit odd at first but actually rather cool because it means if you lived there you could take everything you needed for the day at the beach and leave it in the car. And if it
gets too hot you can just hop in and put the air con on for a bit. Genius.
There is an amazing ice cream shop in Rainbow Beach that does delicious flavours including tiramisu, cherry and Mars but my favourite has to be Pina Colada - yummy. Aside from the ice cream shop there's not a lot else in Rainbow Beach so it worked out to be rather a cheap place to stay.
We opted to do a guided tour of Fraser Island, which is the world's largest sand island, rather than a self drive 4x4 with 7 other people. We didn’t fancy camping in the heat and didn’t really want a 21-year-old driving us over sand dunes as Fraser is notorious for accidents. We think we made the right choice as we got to see the main sights of the island and have food cooked for us. Also it seemed every group returning a 4x4 to our hostel had to pay a penalty of some sort so it probably would’ve worked out more expensive to do a self drive trip.
The ferry from Rainbow Beach only takes about 10 minutes and then we were in the
Lake McKenzie
This is Simon's foot truck and bouncing along 75 Mile Beach. There were 14 of us on the tour and we had the honour of sitting in the cab with the driver who was very typically Aussie - he even had a vest with the slogan ‘Born to Fish, Forced to Work’.
Being in the truck took us back to our Africa trip as bouncing over sand tracks is pretty similar to driving on the roads in Africa. There are a lot of pure bred dingos living on Fraser which can attack small children and we were lucky enough to see one on the beach.
Our guide took us to Indian Head from where you can see sharks, turtles and rays swimming in the sea below. It is not advisable to swim in the sea off Fraser - that’s what the lakes are for. We spent a few hours at Lake McKenzie which is like paradise on earth. The freshwater lake is as clear as a swimming pool and warm while the sugary-white sand is known for its exfoliation properties although we didn’t go as far as to rub it on our teeth like some people.
We also floated down Eli
Creek on our backs, occasionally getting beached as the water level isn’t very high in places and walked through a rainforest where a lizard tried to crawl up my leg. This was not pleasant. Our base for the night was at the former sand mining site at Dilli Village which was more than adequate with better showers than some hostels and also home to a wallaby and a couple of enormous goanna lizards that looked like small crocs.
Our tour also took us to the Maheno shipwreck and the coloured sands which were not too dissimilar to those we had seen on Rainbow Beach.
It was really hot on Fraser and there were loads of biting insects about - I ended up coming back covered in bites on my bottom which was pretty worrying considering I had that part covered the whole time.
We had one more night in Rainbow Beach before an epic 19 hour bus journey to take us to Airlie Beach from where we would set sail around the Whitsunday Islands.
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