First day on Fraser Island

Wednesday, November 12th

6:30am starts seems to be the status quo for us these days, as the Fraser Experience tour 4x4 that fits 14 was supposed to pick us up at 7:10am.  The 4x4 didn't actually come till 7:30am, and our guide, Neil, was not happy to see our big packs.  He said we should of left it with our hostel, but we were told that they would take care of it.  The resolution was we will store it in the bus station locker for two days.  Problem solved.  Later we found out other people brought their bags too and he stored it in the tour center.  How annoying!

We had a full tour group.  7 passengers from Hervey and 7 from Rainbow beach.  It took us 1.5 hours to get from Hervey to Rainbow beach.  We then had to drive to the pier to take a ten minute ferry ride to Fraser Island.  By the time we got there it was around 10:20am

Fraser island is the largest sand island in the world, and the fourth largest coastline in australia.  It was recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1992.  It is 124km long and an average of 14 km wide.  It's been forming for around the last 800 thousand years.  The land mass is 170,000 hectares.  Vegetation covers 90 percent and rain forest covers 10 percent.  Fraser is the only place that has a rain forest that grows on sand.  The average rainfall is 1.5 meters per year.  Speed limit is 80km per hour.

There's rough water surrounding the island, crashing hard onto the beach.  Right off the bat we had to be adventurous and slowly drive through water on the coast of the beach.  Basically the beach was submerged in water.  We made it through alright.

There's lots of fresh water creeks.  The best filter for water is sand.  Supposed to be a beautiful view up top.  Fraser is also probably the only beach you can take off and land by a small plane to get an aerial view.  A 15min plane ride cost AUD70.  Us poor backpackers couldn't afford it.  Maybe next time, but we did take a look at other people's trip videos and it didn't look so spectacular.

Our trip for the day was up and down the eastern beach coastline.  Our first stop was at Eli creek for an hour or so waiting for people to do the plane ride.  We could of floated down the creek, but it was way too cold.  We did give it a try by stripping down to our bathing suits walking up there to realize the water was really ice cold.  It would of been bearable if it was sunny, but because it wasn't, we would of absolutely freezed afterwards.  Also it didn't look like it was so cool anyways.

Bad weather seems to follow us everywhere we go...but it may be due to poor planning as we're following rainy season up the east coast.  Perth to Melbourne to Byron, and now Fraser.  Fraser is covered with clouds that's spitting rain.

Red canyon was a quick 10 mins stop.  It was basically a red canyon, and we snapped a few quick photos before it poured on us.  The canyon was shades of red - red, orange, and yellow.  Pretty.  Neil also found us some pipis (clam like things) to show us what indigenous people ate back in the day.  He even cracked one open for us to have a taste, but we didn't dare to try.  Not sure why since I eat raw oysters and clams.  I think it's the idea he just cracked it open to eat.  It doesn't get fresher than that!

We then climbed up Indian head.  It was Captain Cook who named it when he landed there because he saw a dark colored man.  The sand there was really fine and nice, the waves were very rough.  It was nice and scenic up top.  We took a lot of photos.  Unfortunately my flips got stretched at Koh phangan so I was constantly slipping.  I actually fell and scraped my hand a bit, but I will survive.

We then drove to Maheno shipwreck, which  was beached in 1935 and now a skeleton almost consumed by the elements.  It was built by the Scottish, and currently 5 decks are buried under the sand.  We took tons of photos, and even taught our new friend Maek how to take jumping photos for us.  We also took a group photo with everyone on our camper with the shipwreck as the backdrop.

Before we went to our cabins at dilli village, we stopped by a store to get whatever we wanted.  Bernice and I opted for a sweet yummy magnum bar while Steph got the salty doritos-like chips.  As a group we discussed the need to have tim-tam slammers one morning - coffee with tim-tam bars.  How exciting!

The drive to the cabins was pleasant, still dreary weather but smooth sailing.  We even got a glimpse of a cool rainbow on the way.  There's only two singles in a cabin, so I shared a room with Maek, a Swiss dude who went to Cairns to study English.  To our surprise, we got real beds that were comfortable.  We even got nice clean towels.  This was definitely an upgrade to our expectations of camping overnight.  Thank goodness it wasn't camping because there were sudden bursts of  showers throughout the evening.

We only brought one set of shower stuff for the three of us, so Bernice quickly hopped on the shower train when we got there. Steph, Maek, and I went to check out a lagoon nearby.  Our intentions were to just check it out, but the water was pretty warm, so we went for a swim.  It was nice.  Felt like we were swimming in the Nile or something because there was tall grass surrounding us.  We also took the life guard float to swim with.  I was using it as a kick board to go down the lagoon.  Eventually Steph went back to get Bernice, trying to convince her to swim, but she decided not to, and we just got out to shower.

We sat on the veranda chatting while we waited for dinner.  It was nice to meet the other folks.  We had Portuguese, Irish, Canadian and Swiss travelers on out tour.  The Irish guys were especially funny.  Reminded me of the sarcastic humor of Paul.  Our dinner was burgers, sausage, onions, potatoes, macaroni and potato salad, and garden salad.  It was also Liana's (Canadian) 27th birthday, so we all signed a postcard for her and sang her a birthday song while she blew out her candle on top of a blueberry muffin.

It was definitely a fun hilarious evening, but at 10:30pm I couldn't keep my eyes opened any longer, so I called it quits.