My Life Down Under: Fraser Island

Day 5-the 9th

Woke up early since we were so excited about our Fraser island experience. We got picked up at 730 and headed out to the harbor where we caught the ferry that goes over. Slowest ferry every built. It didn’t even feel like we were moving. Once we were actually on the island we formed into our tour group and met our tour guide Martin. The tour that we chose to do was a 2 day 1 night tour, but the reason that it stuck out to us was that we were actually on the island until about 830 pm on the second day. So it was a full two days where a lot of the other tours leave around 2 pm on the second day. Anyways our tour was mainly for people ages 18-35 (and then those young at heart). The van/bus things that we ride in were awesome. German made tanks pretty much that were specially designed for Fraser. Insane 4x4 vehicles that can handle any part of Fraser. They were pretty cool. We hopped aboard and headed out for our first stop which was Basin Lake. Similar to Lake Poona, Basin Lake was formed in the middle of sand dunes. There were no leaches this time, but it looked pretty much the same as other lakes we had seen before. Becaause the sand dunes are covered with trees and bushes you can’t really tell it’s sand, so it just looked like a small lake with a bunch of trees around it. Typical Oregon. We then hiked over 2 km to get to Central Station which is the main camping/cooking site on the island to have lunch. When we arrived, Martin, had lunch ready for us already. Considering most of the people in the group were backpackers we were eating like kings. Tons of chicken and cold cuts for sandwiches along with fruit and pasta salad and everything. It was amazing. After lunch we went on a nature hike to work off our food and to get up a sweat since we were going to cool off at Lake Mckenzie next. We came across one of the biggest and oldest trees on Fraser. It takes 6 people holding hands to go all the way around it!! So crazy. After we were all nice and sweaty we hopped back on the bus to head to Lake Mckenzie. WOW!! It was unreal. We were really lucky to have blue sunny sky and the water was crystal clear. There was white sand with amazing blue water that was so warm. I could have easily stayed there all day. Kiley obviously took a million photos and we had a mini photo shoot which was really funny. A bunch of us played football in the water and just hung out for a few hours. The best part was that because it was a freshwater lake you felt amazing afterwards. The sand also was silica so you can clean your jewelry with it (similar to Whitehaven beach) which was really cool. A few hours there and we headed back to the Resort to shower and get ready for dinner. Again we ate like kings. You could tell who was the backpackers in the group. We had Mexican. I felt like Greg eating my massive burrito. But it was amazing. It is actually impossible not only to find Mexican food in general over here, but good Mexican food? You can forget it. It was a nice change of pace. We then just hung out at the Dingo bar and bonded with the other people in the group over a few drinks and tried to go to bed decently early since breakfast the next day was at 630!!! UGH.

I got to ride up front with Martin

The ridiculously bumpy road

Doing a bit of Tarzan action

Tree Hugger

One of the largest and oldest trees on Fraser

Lake Mckenzie

Day 6-the 10th

Second day of Fraser was packed with all sorts of treats. After an early breakfast we set out once again on the extreme rollercoaster roads to see the eastern and northern parts of the island. Our first stop was the sandblow. It was NOTHING compared to what we got to see in Rainbow Beach a few days before. Not only could you not get down onto the sand, but you could hardly even see it from where the view point was. Lame. We then moved on to start our drive along the 75 mile beach, which apparently is only 52 miles actually. Not really sure what the story is behind that. As we were driving along with Martin telling us random facts about the island we come across a sand bank that had broken away. So there was a drop off from where we were driving to where the water was. As we were driving across Martin makes a comment along the lines of ‘this is actually really dangerous’ and as he says that we start moving sideways towards the dropoff!! It felt like we were driving on icy snow. The drop was only a few feet, two at the most, but still enough to tip the bus over if one side of it was to go over. So Martin had us evacuate the bus while all the boys in the group got out and started digging around the tires and then pushed the van backwards to get unstuck. It took probably a good 20 minutes or so for us to get ourselves out of that little situation. Driving along a bit more and we come across a pack of dingos!! I guess they usually are by themselves or only in a pair, but the pack we saw had 5 of them! We stopped the bus and they were walking right around it. It was really cool to see them up close, they just look like cute dogs!! Just a little ways down the highway (yes it’s actually considered a highway, one of the few sand highways in Australia) we stopped at Eli Creek which is a freshwater creek that runs into the ocean. The water was a bit cold, but it felt really good since it was so hot out!! The current is really strong so you just walk to the top of the creek and literally float down. It was really fun. Also the dingos followed us down there and were just hanging out right by the water!! We made sure to stay away. After cooling off in the creek we hopped back onto the bus to the Maheno shipwreck. The tide was up so we couldn’t get too close to it, but we still got some good photos in. You could really see where the ocean had made its mark on the ship. There was rust and holes everywhere. After the shipwreck we stopped at Indian Head to have lunch. We then hiked to the top of Indian Head to see the view. It was amazing. Indian Head itself is just a huge cliff and then on both sides is just the sand highway so it’s just miles and miles of gorgeous beaches. After working up a sweat from the hike to the top we hopped back onto the bus and headed to the champagne pools. They were just pools of ocean runoff water that created little hot spots. I’m not a fan of the salt water and even I really enjoyed the pools. The only bad thing was there was TONS of people there. It seemed like the cool place to be, but sometimes it’s better to have places for yourself. After spending some time at the pools we left to head back to the resort again to shower and get ready for dinner. We were able to use showers in the lodges even though we weren’t staying that night so that was really nice. It always feels good to get the salt off of you. At around 830 we loaded onto the ferry to head back to Hervey Bay. All and all a very successful trip. Everyone in our group was awesome and we made some really good friends.