Well over halfway through my trip, and I’ve come to realize something fairly obvious - Australia seems to have cornered the market on a huge portion of the weird and unusual plants and animals of the world. Pouch-equipped mammals like the kangaroo? Check. A wide range of generally poisonous and unpleasant spiders, snakes, and jellyfish? Sure. And of course, there’s the world’s largest rock near Alice Springs, that’s probably bigger than Monaco! So, that brings us to Fraser Island – which kilometer for kilometer boasts some of the most diversity in the world.
It all comes down to sand.
Fraser Island is basically a huge sand dune, over 2,000 sq. km worth, off the coast of Australia. Now, my first thought was that it was going to be a desert, almost like a classic castaway story.
What a surprise to find that it’s actually an amazingly diverse jungle – with plants and animals all specifically adapted to the climate… even the humans have had to adapt – as paved roads are pretty much non-existent, and instead you have the fun choice of driving on either a) really deep, dry, and tricky sand or b) really wet, slippery, and tricky sand. Which prompted the invention of tour buses like this:
…able to drive all over. Planes have the same difficulty… and pilots get to try this sort of thing on the beach:
‘kay, that’s enough background… I arrived on the island in the morning, and joined the rest of our Cool Dingoes tour group, led by our truly knowledgeable guide Chris. Again, the benefits of travelling in the low season continue to add up – we had a bare 12 people in a bus built for 40, which made everything easier. Heck, even just getting on/off the bus was about 5 minutes faster each time!
Our first stop was the stunning Lake McKenzie – one of many freshwater lakes in the middle of the island. You often hear travel writers rhapsodize over ‘crystal clear water’ at a beach or river somewhere, but this one put them to shame. It was so clear that as you dove underwater in the shallows, you could see the bottom seemingly dropping into the dark abyss a hundred meters away… just stunning.
… but cold too! Swims were very brief, and we chilled out on the beach trying to warm up again:
The rest of the afternoon was spent with a couple of hikes to another lake (protected, so no swimming, alas) and among the trees, which were a great hodgepodge of massive gum trees or other, well, big trees whose names I can't recall:
It turns out that the island had been heavily logged since the 20’s, happily chopping down 400 year+ trees. The protectionist movement was only able to get a response from the nation when they took a picture of 27 children sitting on just one stump of a monster tree – the message being that “hey, our kids won’t be able to see these trees unless we act”…
As we headed back to our bus, we got to stop and drink from another (again) crystal stream, checking out some freshwater eels, and the massive ferns that are essentially unchanged in form for the last 300 million years.
Enough of the nature stuff – rolling back into the fenced off resort area (to protect from dingo incursions), it was time to washup, change, and grab some dinner.
Except for one wee problem… our luggage had been shipped back to the mainland, and wouldn’t be back for another few hours. Chris was a star, and he got us free beers as a make-good and apology. And, like so many things, cold beers ARE an astonishingly effective customer service tool – we were all very happy… so much so in fact, that I got the group playing the “Bawk” and a few other party games. A very good time ‘twas had by all – seeing everyone clucking like chickens is a surefire way to break the ice.
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