My fellowship / travelling stories: Island of sand aka Fraser Island

Fraser Island, Queensland is listed as one of Australia's World Heritage site and my friend Ben Isserlin suggested a visit to it and as usual he is right about how enjoyable this trip was.

I spent the weekend there enjoying a two day tour with the Cool Dingo Tours. They are based out of Kingfisher Resort and is a well-organized backpacker tour company. The two days are packed with activities and the food for those two days were fantastic. There were 9 of us on this tour with most people speaking German! Currently there is a lot of Germans traveling around the country.. however there's also one other couple from Quebec and one guy from England.

Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island, so inevitably the whole trip is about the sand and how it gets into my clothes. The first day was spent in Lake MacKenzie. Beautiful turquoise water with great beach for sunbathing. To keep things in perspective, this is WINTER for Australia and the highest temperature we had was 23oC and SUNNY. However it is still freezing cold in the water, I got as far as going ankle high in the water and then went for a hike instead.

Lake MacKenzie

Amazingly on this island of sand there is vegetation and a huge rainforest. We went for a rainforest trek after Lake MacKenzie and was told to hug Big Jim, a massive santinay tree, as hugging Big Jim will make sure we see a dingo the next day! The different forestation and vegetation around the island is pretty amazing and it's neat how this cycle of life is all based on sand.

Big Jim

Second day was spent on the Seventy Mile beach and going North. This is a stretch of beach that is the length of the island and this is the main highway. This is pretty neat as all the 4WDs go 80 km/hr on this stretch of sand and there's no road signs. There is even a airplane strip on the highway and unless you know about it there's no way to tell! We then went to Champagne Pools (a sea water pool that again is freezing cold) and Indian head to spot the wildlife. I saw quite a few stingrays, and some big fish but no turtles/sharks/whales there.

The happy news is that we did finally spot two humpback whales on the way down the beach and they even did a tail flip for us! We also spot a dingo as well around Eli Creek which was our last stop. Plus we had the most perfect sunset and to end the perfect weekend, we went to the main resort to use their heated hot tub! Trust me it's a lot warmer than the natural lakes and pools!