To get a real flavour of Fraser Island you need to be there, crystal clear fresh water lakes, a beach almost 100kms long, friendly campfire dingo’s and an aboriginal to entertain us all. Watch the video. There’s also the tendency to hit your head every 3 seconds on the roof of the car, its that bumpy. My group contained a Scottish couple, 2 French girls, 3 Danes (1 man 2 girls) and 3 welsh girls, I was the only English one there. 11 of us in 1 4-wheel drive Toyota that really wasn’t designed for sand and a massive amount of sand to explore, what could go wrong? We got stuck on the first day, took a track next to our camp and ended up having to get out and push the car just to turn it around whilst a guy in a real sand vehicle drove around us. Angry and frustrated we retreated back to base.
3 days is enough to spend on a sand island but to see half of Fraser you’d need at least a week, and to be on speed. We explored a creek, found some Aussies who had set up their chairs in the creek and were enjoying some cold beers in cold chairs, genius. Then on to the shipwreck, its pretty damn cool, but still just another shipwreck, got some cool photos of it, broke the distance rule and then continued up to the camp. That night we had a Barbie and my god (Eatalottia, god of food) was there plenty of meat, reminded me of camping with my family in the new forest a tradition that is kept to every year, tons of food and then cricket! We didn’t have a cricket set on Fraser. After dinner some time the camp owner come out to play, an aboriginal with the Scottish name of Malcolm, he also has an aboriginal name but I have no idea how to spell it, I know it means ‘Thunder is coming’ which naturally I thought was awesome, everyone calls him smiley though so that’s what we stuck to. He played the didgeridoo, which is really called ‘Yigi yigi’ or various other names, and told us all about his culture.
Smiley mentioned the sunrise and that there was a nice little spot to watch it from behind his house, so in the morning I panicked thinking I had already missed it and rushed off down to the little perch at which I found smiley sitting there waiting still, I sat next to him and we talked about more personal things such as his family back home and he told me a little more about the way he lives, in the best of both worlds as he put it, having the freedom of living on Fraser and sharing his culture with us and then going back to the mainland to his wife and kids in their nice house and fancy car. The sun came up just after I got there so really my timing was perfect, and so was the sunrise, from our position we got to look over the beach and the sea, watching a couple chase each other and dance on the beach who looked like they thought no one was watching. The sun came up red, then slowly turned gold as it rose creating a line of gold on the sea and beach where it reflected, pure beauty. Also made me realise where the idea of a Yellow Brick Road came from. Later in the morning he took us on a bushwalk and explained the use of various plants then did a dance for us. Fascinating stuff.
On our schedule we had the champagne pools and had been told how wonderful they were. Indian head the start of our walking point was really cool, even though we melted, its basically a cliff and the dangerous part of that appealed immensely to me, so naturally I sat and took photos over the edge and hopped along the boulders to the farthest point and we watched the pair of dolphins, stingray and shark float around in the water nearby. All good fun then we headed off to the pools, 2 hours and 3 gallons of sweat later we got there, all to find something we looked at and thought, ‘hmm this cant be it must be round the corner.’ So sitting on the rocks and feeling utterly pissed off at such a huge anti-climax we sat by the 1 remaining pool with water in and ate our lunch, then read books and went back to the car. What a waste of a day on a paradise island. Our longest day over we headed back and made the most of it by having a contest in the car to see who could keep the most water in a full cup. Hilarity and wetness naturally ensued, what fun! This night I cooked, (I actually cooked the night before too) we had spaghetti bolognaise which was delicious, of course it was I made it! Vainly enjoying the delicious perfectly made dinner I helped myself to 3rds and sat round the campfire.
The company who sent us out and everyone we spoke to said don’t swim in the sea, there are tiger sharks and you’ll get dragged out and eaten. Well I can prove that’s rubbish as I didn’t get eaten, nor did the jellyfish they failed to mention sting me. Even though I swam several times. Smiley informed me it was rubbish too, apparently he even had a surfer come over with an aboriginal made board and try out the waves, then leave the board behind as a present to Smiley. So obviously it’s all scare tactics. Anyway the last day was when we went to lake McKenzie, the jewel of the island. We left late on the way there and almost had to drive through the sea which seeing as our car had trouble with sand we weren’t confident about. Luckily we just made it, and then we headed into the jungle again. The lake was gorgeous, and we swam in it for hours, splashing about and sunbathing, I too sunbathed but not intentionally, I fell asleep on the beach (the lake has a beach, white sand) and woke up sunburned and confused. The trip wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t get stuck at least 3 more times, so we proceeded to complete it on the way to the ferry worrying about being late but determined not to miss the really boggy patches. Crazy French Estelle was driving and we had a scream, literally.
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