Fraser Island - Day 1

Today (18th Jan - yesterday) has been fantastic. We got up around 8 and packed up our stuff to go on a two day trip to Fraser Island. Fraser island is one of largest sand islands in the world. It has about 56 perminant inhabitants. It's also home to lots of dingos, which are like wild dogs. Apparently (one story suggests) it's named after Eliza Fraser. She was the wife of James Fraser who was a British ship captain. He crashed his ship on the great barrier reef and ended up on what is now Fraser Island. Somehow - the exact version of events is unknown, the husband ended up being speared by Aboriginals and dying. Eliza survived and managed to get back to the mainland. Apparently she wasn't a big fan of the island for obvious reasons but they named it after her anyway. Or at least that's what our tour guide Gary told us.

We got picked up by Gary, who also told us his name was Steve and Mike incase we wanted to write a bad review on trip advisor, at 9:15am from rainbow beach. There was around 6 other people also getting picked up from Rainbow beach,  whilst another 11 has been picked up from Noosa at 6:30am.

We were picked up in a convoy of 3 four-wheeled drives, which seated 8 people each. One vehicle, the lead vehicle, was driven by Gary, and the other two were driven by other people on the tour. We were in Garys almost all day. We just had small rucksacks as we had left our big backpacks at the hostel we stayed at last night as we're returning for a night after this trip.

We drove about 20 minutes to get the barge over to Fraser Island. We were flying around all over the place as we were driving over sand. The barge was very quick and then we drove a little while to the beach accomdation we are staying on.  It's an eco hostel with 4 rooms, a kitchen/dining area, a games room and a porch type area. Each room has one shower and one toilet and sink. The first room is for staff so the rest us crammed into the other three rooms. We had lunch which was like build your own fajitas and got changed into our swimming costumes before heading out. 

The beach we are staying on and drove along is one 75 mile long beach. It's just beautiful. It's so empty apart from the tour companies' and fishermans' 4 wheel drives going up and down. And the sea is so calm and blue. It's amazing.

Our first stop was Lake Garawongera. It is one of largest perched lakes apparently. It's above sea level and is apparently full of rain water. It looked beautiful from a far but when we got in for a swim we discovered it looked like a lake of wee. Apparently it's due to the trees around the lake. Gary told us that one of the types of tree around the lake produced what tee tree oil is made from and that that's what we were basically swimming in. We also kept getting nibbled on by those little fish that are kept in tanks for people to put their feet into. So it was probably a good lake to swim in.

After the lake we got back in the cars, drove back down to the beach through the woods to Eli creek. This was like a little but fast flowing river down into the sea. We took it in turns sitting on rubber rings and floating down it. The water was much colder than the lake, which had been almost warm. It was just so relaxing. It was a bit crowded with families and kids but so nice all the same.

Next we headed off to a shipwreck or a boat called the Maheno. It was previously a  luxury ship built by same shipyard as Titanic. It was converted into hospital ship in WW1 before being turned back to its original self. When it came out of service, it was towed past Fraser Island to be scrapped but the ship beached and was left there. It was then used as target practise in WW2 by army bombers. Now it just sits on the sand, going rusty for people to look at.

Next we saw the pinnacles. This was an area that had different coloured sandstone in layers from top to bottom due exposure to the elements The bottom was a pure white silica.

It was then a long drive back along the beach to the hostel for dinner  On the way I had a go driving. I was so nervous but decided to give it a go as driving on the beach was a lot more straightforward than up any tracks. It was fun but scary and at first I kept accidently pressing the brake too hard and everyone would go flying forward. It was an automatic so I didn't have to worry about the gears which was good. On the drive back we saw a dingo which was very skinny compared to ones we saw at the wildlife park. 

Once we were back at the hostel everyone showered and got changed and then it was time got dinner, which was steak, sausages, fried onions and new potatoes with chocolate Swiss roll and lemon cake for dessert. We sat and ate and chatted to the other girls near us which was nice.

After dinner we went to the beach to look at the stars.  It was really dark so needed torches and we had to carry dingo sticks which are basically just big sticks to intimidate the dingos so they don't attack. The night sky was incredible. There is no light pollution on Fraser island so we could see so much. It was amazing.

We then headed back to the hostel. Lauren and I had a quick game of pool and then we went to bed at around 10:15 as we have an early start tomorrow.