For our final sightseeing adventure before Myra’s departure we decided on a two day tour of Fraser Island, reached via a short ferry ride from Rainbow Beach. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and is accessible only with 4WD vehicles. Despite being essentially a big pile of sand the island is extensively covered in forest and dotted with lakes and streams. The eastern shore serves as the main highway while the limited inland roads are narrow, undulating, bone rattling rivers of sand. Somehow our military-style tour bus had the mechanical wherewithal to navigate the treacherous terrain. We saw more than one self-drive 4WDers trying to extricate themselves from axel-deep sand.
Fraser Island is famous for its dingo population and we saw one trotting along the beach the first day. It looked a bit scrawny, not as if it had recently ate anyone’s baby. Our first major stop was the spring-fed Lake Wabby, which is reached by a long walk through forest and across sand dunes. This provided the opportunity to add to my collection of photographs of Deborah trudging miserably in the heat up steep, dusty trails. The lake was a popular swimming hole (too popular for my taste) and a beautiful green color. After lunch we rode on more bumpy roads (in an apparent attempt to dislodge said lunch) and walked through a temperate rain forest. The evening meal was a decent enough buffet affair, and was followed by a stroll around the resort grounds looking down for lizards and up for the unfamiliar stars of the southern sky.
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The highway
The bus
The travelers
The dingo
The forest
The misery
The girls
The rainforest
The rainforest, again.
The beach.