7 October 2008 - Fraser Island

7th September

We all got up at 6.30 for breakfast and sorted out everything we planned to take with us, by 7.30am we were heading to the harbor ready to get on the ferry. Our 4 wheel drive was a Land rover defender, Rachel aptly named her Brenda the defender a name that stuck for the following few days.

We arrived on Fraser at 9am, Dan had the first go at driving as he is the more experienced driver out of the four of us. The whole island is sand so the driving took some getting used to, some parts were worse than others and the whole jeep was bouncing around all over the place. I was a bit worried about the food as I didn’t’t want any of the things in glass containers to brake.

Whilst thinking about the food it suddenly dawned on me that I had left the cool box in the van back in Hervey bay!!! I broke the news to the others, Dan was especially unimpressed and didn’t’t speak to me for a while, but it wasn’t really that much of a problem as it was just the meat, we still had vegetables, bread and milk so we would just have to go veggie for a few days!!!

Our first stop was lake McKenzie, which was stunning it had beautiful white and fine sand with turquoise water, we dipped our feet in the water which was fresh! We had a frisbee in the jeep so we bought it down with us and had a through about on the sand, it was good fun although some of us were better than others!!

After an hour or so a bus full of tourists arrived so we decided we would move on to Lake Wabby, due to the tides on the east side of the island we could only drive on the beach before 12pm and after 4pm so we had some time to kill.

Rachel drove next, I have to say I was impressed as some of the driving was really hard and the tracks are only wide enough for one jeep so there are lay bys for passing cars but reversing into some of these were really hard as the sand was deep and we were on the edge of a cliff!

Lake wabby was beautiful too, it had greeny blue water surrounded by huge sand dunes, the sand here is so fine. We spent a good few hours here walking over the dunes and sitting by the lake. The lake has lots of cat fish in it so we could see a few swimming around, again the water was freezing so we just dipped our feet in!!

We left lake wabby and headed towards the east side of the island as the tide would be lower, so it was safe to drive on the beach. The entire west side of the island is covered with mangroves so you are not allowed to drive in that area.

John and I drove next, we had planned to stay in a campsite near the Maheno wreck as we wanted to see it at sunrise the following morning as that way we wouldn’t have the crowds of tourists ruining the tranquillity (and the photo‘s!!)

On the way we stopped at one of the only shops on the island, we topped up our water and ought some chicken so we would have so meat for the following day. Luckily we had brought the burgers I had made the night before and a few tins of tuna so we still had plenty to see us through the following 2 days. By the time we found a spot the sun was setting so the boys set up the tents whilst us girls sorted out the dinner!

Our campsite was on the beach up a small verge so we were safe from any traffic and tides. The island is inhabited with dingo’s so we kept our eyes peels in case they came on the hunt for food. We were all rather disappointed when we didn’t see any, then after dinner whilst us girls enjoyed some wine and the guys had a beer one came running past us. It was dark so we flashed our light and just caught a glimpse of it running off.

By 9.30pm we were all feeling tired and we had planned to get up early in the morning so we cleared away then settled down in our tents.