Talk about jumping in the deep end.
Until a couple of days ago, we hadn’t taken Chuck The Truck
off the tarmac, much less a gravel road. And certainly not through a sand dune.
Fraser Island does that to you.
It’s not like you’ve got much choice. Fraser Island is the
world’s largest sand dune, measuring some 120km in length and 20km in width.
I’d never seen anything like it. Vast stretches of open
beach, as far as the eye can see, waves washing in on one side, sand cliffs
eroded by the tide on the other, and you just go barreling straight up the
middle.
Magic.
The beach is the main thoroughfare here on Fraser Island.
Which is lucky, as there’s no roads. Unless you count boggy, sandy, inland
tracks that until a couple of days ago I wouldn’t have thought you could walk
down, let alone drive along.
Let’s just say we’re no longer off-road virgins.
This morning was a bit hair-raising though. I had an 11am
appointment with Radio Live’s Weekend Variety Wireless with Wallace Chapman,
standing in for the redoubtable Graeme Hill – a gig I’ve been doing for years,
and love it.
Anyway, there’s only one point on the whole island with
phone reception, and it was a good 50km south of our campsite.
Lake MacKenzie, Fraser Island |
We ended up wave-running down the beach, which is an
extremely dodgy practice whereby you have to time your runs between each sweep
of the tide, and hope you squeak through between the sea water and the cliff
face before the next wave.
Sometimes you've just got to lie back and take it |
So much for not getting salt water on a vehicle. Oh well,
there’s always car washes, right? I made it to air, anyhow.
We spent the rest of the day happily rambling around the
island’s tracks, visiting pristine fresh water lakes, of which Fraser Island
has plenty. They’re called perched lakes, formed by rainwater and rising water
table filtering through leaves from the rainforest, between the inland sand
dunes.
The best was Lake Mackenzie – white-sand beach, rainforest,
and beautiful clear water. I went for a swim, but the girl chickened out. It’s
still not that warm, despite the fact we’re now at 26 degrees south of the
equator.
So now we’ve crossed the Noosa River in a barge, driven up the Cooloola Way (basically a beach) to magnificent Rainbow Beach, with its multi-coloured sands, got another barge across to Fraser, and I’m now sitting in our tent next to our gas lantern writing this.
Tomorrow we’ve got to retrace our steps to the barge at the
southern point of Fraser to Inskip Point, before rejoining civilization and the
highway north to Hervey Bay, Town of 1770, and Airlie Beach, where we’ll get a
ferry to Whitehaven Island in the WhitSundays.
We notched up 2000km today since leaving Sydney just under
two weeks ago.
I really wish I'd bought BP shares.
I really wish I'd bought BP shares.
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