Today we went to see Fraser Island - the largest sand island in the World. There are no paved roads on the island so only 4x4 access is permitted, hence we had booked onto day tour with a company called Fraser Island Discovery. We were collected from Perigian Beach at 6.15am by a minibus - an early start for a long day - and transferred to a massive 20 seater 4x4 aptly named 'warrior' when we reached Noosa Heads. Our journey took us initially through Cooloola National Park as the warrior drove along the beach, which had an official road! It felt strange to be driving along, seeing the waves lapping at the wheels of the bus. Our first stop was Rainbow beach, still on the mainland. This beach is famous for its different coloured sands, hence the name, but has also led to the shameful deaths of many a 4x4 vehicle whose owners either don't read the tides properly or manage to drive through areas of quicksand. At the local Shell petrol station there was a wall of shame - showing photos of all the vehicles that had to be towed out!

A 5 minute drive on from Rainbow beach was Inskip point where we boarded a barge that took us and several other tour buses over the short stretch of sea to the island. The main highway for the island is the beach running almost the entire east coast, named 70 mile beach. Although apparently it's not actually 70 miles long - original estimates of length were made in error by Captain Cook as he thought the beach was continuous with the mainland. Along the beach you could see springs of fresh water running out to the sea. These were an odd dark brown colour, run off from tannin from the island trees, and made for interesting viewing as the brown waters swirled with the salt water where it met the incoming tide.

We turned inland off the beach and reached a small township - walled off by fences and electrolysed cattle grids (with angular metal as opposed to the more traditional tubular style) - all designed to keep the dingoes out of the town. Fraser Island is one of few places which has a good quantity of pure blooded dingoes - most on the mainland now have cross-bred with domestic dogs. Everywhere on the island were signs to keep your food locked away and not to feed the dingoes. Whilst they may look cuddly and innocent they continue to attack humans and only recently a young girl had been mawled, and also a female camper attacked by two when doing a 'wee walk' at night. Signs warned not to head into the bush alone.

Our first long stop was at the picture perfect Lake Mackenzie. This is an unusual lake in that it is a large pool of water, fed only by rain water, sitting on top of sand above the water table. This in itself sounds wrong - you'd expect the water to sink through the sand. The reason it doesn't is due to the way the lake was originally formed. The area would have been forest originally but fire burnt away an area of vegetation leaving exposed sand. Wind then swirled in causing the sand to form a large bowl-shape. Storms coming in took all the tree debris and leaves into the base of the bowl and it filled with rainwater. The result is a spectacularly clear fresh water lake with white fine sand beaches. It would be an idyllic location if you were staying independently on the island and could catch the beach at a quiet time. On a day tour you are subject to the fact that about 80 other people are doing the same trip and getting off their buses at the same time (not quite the same experience)! I think the tour was a good taster of the island but given that the appeal of the place is its remoteness and lack of access it's best enjoyed camping for a few days with independent travel. I brought my swimming goggles with me and left the beach to swim out into the lake. It was quite scary as the lake got deeper and the debris gathered on the sand bed and the water murkier - I half expected something to come jumping out at me. We were reassured however there a no crocs - it's too cold for them - thank god!

After a fine lunch of salt water barramundi fish on the BBQ, and a glass of cold white wine (or beer in Scott's case) - this was a no expense spared excursion - we boarded the bus again to head towards subtropical rainforest. We saw huge strangling fig trees which stole the nutrients of the Kauri trees they grew up and slowly killed. When the kauri tree dies and degrades, the fig roots are left as a spectacular weaving mass with daylight passing through so you can look up inside the tree. We saw a river running so clear on the sand it looked like a thin film only of water. Strangely it made no noise at all as there were no rocks for the water to flow over, just sand. In the middle of the river stood a huge fern - the largest fern species in the world. The one we saw was thought to be 1600 yrs old and its branches were hollow and filled with water using hydrostatic pressure to hold the branches upright.

We then made our way back to Inskip along the difficult terrain of soft sand tracks. The tide was too far in to travel all the way back to the barge along the beach, so we had to take an awful track back inland - it was so bumpy. I was glad to be sitting near the front - those on the back seats were queasy!

We reached Perigian Beach again by 5.30pm and decided to go for a stroll along the beach as we had spent too long sitting on our bums today! As we took the sandy path down to the beach, straddled on either side by long grasses, our thoughts turned to the story we'd heard earlier about a small girl at this exact spot only a couple of months ago. Apparently a brown snake, known for being aggressive and venomous, shot out of the grass and wrapped itself around her leg. Amazingly it didn't bight her and she managed to shake it off - but nonetheless we felt a little jumpy.

We saw a few blue bottle jelly fish washed up on the beach, but far less in quantity than had been on Fraser island - it would explain why noone was swimming in the sea there. Back at the Bullman's we enjoyed our last evening with the family playing Chinese whispers at the dinner table with the kids.