G’day folks!

After leaving Magnetic Island we headed down to Brisbane for the night before making our way over to the Sunshine Coast. While in Brisbane we watched the Queensland Reds play the Blue Bulls from South Africa in a Super 14 game at Suncorp Stadium. The Reds won! We then had a couple of days to spend in Noosa before we started our tour of Fraser Island.

We had quite an early start on the first day of the tour, (well for us anyway!) as we were being picked up at 9am from the centre of Noosa. We were met at the pick-up point by our tour guide Brendan. He seemed really chilled and was really friendly so we new immediately we had made the right choice in going on a guided tour rather than self-drive. Brendan took us over to our transport for the next 3 days, a 4WD land cruiser which would later be named Troy! At the same time we were introduced to the other people on the tour. We were very lucky with the group of people we had as everyone was really friendly, we instantly hit it off with them all. It was then about an hour and a half journey from Noosa up to Rainbow Beach where we had to catch the ferry over to Fraser Island. There are no roads on Fraser which is why 4WD is essential and actually the law. Once on the island we had our first experience of driving on the sand, as we had a short trip along the beach to our campsite, Dilli Village.

After dropping all our stuff off, we had a quick look around the campsite, which was great with shower blocks with hot water luckily! Brendan then introduced us to the only permanent resident of the campsite… Cloudy a carpet python! He lived under one of the trailers and made us both very nervous, especially as we had a hole in our tent!

It was then off to our first activity of the tour. Brendan dropped us off at Central Station in the middle of the island, where we embarked on a 40 minute walk through the rainforest. It was at Central Station that we got our first sighting of a dingo in the wild! The dingoes on Fraser are the purest of the breed in the whole of Australia. We then made our way over to the spectacular Lake McKenzie. We had a bit of time to spend here, swimming in the lake and exploring the surroundings. The sand around Lake McKenzie is silica sand, so was great for exfoliating our skin! After the lake it was time to head back to the campsite for a BBQ and we spent the night all sitting around the camp fire.

On the second day we had another early start as it was breakfast at 7.30! This was our busiest day of the tour as we had a lot of things to do and see. Our first stop was Eli Creek. We walked a few hundred meters up the creek where a few of us jumped in the clearwater waterway and relaxed as we made our way downstream, unfortunately there hadn’t been a massive rainfall so it wasn’t so effortless as we would have hoped.

After a short drive along the beach, we reached another interesting sight, the Maheno shipwreck. The ship used to be a luxury cruise liner, but was blown ashore to Fraser Island by a cyclone during the 1930’s. Brendan told us that the ship was being towed to Japan to be sold for scrap metal which was apparently going to be used to build planes that were to be involved in the Pearl Harbour attack!

We then drove about 35km further along the beach to Indian Head, the best vantage point on the island. It was quite a steep climb to the top but it was worth it as the views were amazing. It was named Indian Head not because it looks like an Indian, but because Captain Cook saw a group of Aboriginals standing on top and thought they were Indians! On our way to Indian Head we stopped to the Pinnacles, which are a section of cliffs on Fraser that are all different shades of coloured sand.

Our last stop of the day was a visit to the Champagne pools. These were rock pools that you could bathe in whilst the waves from the sea would hit against the rocks and fill rock pools. The brake of the waves would give bubbly effect such as champagne bubbles hence the name champagne pools. It was really cool to bathe in these pools whilst the waves roll in over the rocks.

We then made our way back to camp along the 75 mile beach, where again we enjoyed a bbq and drinks together around the camp fire. It was such a great laugh.

On the final day of the tour, we visited Lake Wabby, another spectacular lake on the island. Lake Wabby is crazy, its surrounded on three sides by eucalypt forest, while the fourth side is a massive sandblow, which is encroaching on the lake at the rate of about 3m a year. So eventually the lake will no longer remain. Brendan warned us of the danger of running down the massive sandblow and diving into the lake, apparently several people have been paralysed in the past few years. As tempting as it was to have a go, Phil decided not to as the risk was pretty bad.

We had an absolutely amazing time on Fraser island!