Frazier Island

I had high hopes for Fraser Island after Hervey Bay was such a bust. There had to be a reason why people came out here. The tour picked us up at 7:30am in our Land Cruiser. We then convened back at the tour headquarters to meet up with the other two cars and everyone going on the tour. There were 17 people going and three cars. We chose to go with Christine (instead of the other two male drivers) because she seemed the least annoying. The other two guys had annoyed me beyond belief after being there for all of 5 minutes. If one more person sang "California Girls" when I walked by I was gonna lose it. We all piled into our cars and headed toward the dock. We needed to take a ferry over to the island, which took about 35 minutes once we were all loaded up. After we got the car on board, we headed up to the passenger deck to look out for dolphins. Alyssa kept spotting huge jellyfish which were interesting because we'd never seen ones that big before.

We were the last to load our car onto the ferry which meant that we were the first off (apparently this is their strategy). We hauled off the ferry and onto the island, speeding through the rainforest towards the beach. Once we reached the beach, we found that it is used as a highway with speed limit signs and everything.

Our first stop was the Mahino shipwreck. Apparently, this was an old ship from New Zealand that had been sold to Japan. As they were towing it to Japan, they got hit by a storm and the boat got washed ashore. It was so buried in the sand that the Japanese couldn't get it out, so they just left it there. 3/4 of it is below the sand, so you can see it used to be huge but is largely been destroyed by the sand and ocean water.

Our next brief stop was at "The Pinnacles". It's was apparently a sacred spot for aboriginal women. I had not known before this but the aboriginal tribes on Fraser Island operated as a matriarchal society and so there were a few places not the island that the local men would not look at or visit because they were sacred to women. The story about the pinnacles is that back before women ran things, there was a girl who was betrothed to an old man by her parents even though she was in love with a young warrior. The girl came to those mountains to seek guidance of one of their serpent spirit gods, who took the form of a man to speak to her. Her old fiancé came upon them talking and out of jealousy, threw his boomerange to kill the man she was talking to. As he turned back into the serpent, the boomerang hit him in the side, splattering his blood all over the rocks and creating the different layers of color seen in the hills. It is said that it was then decided that women should have control over who they married and that was the turning point where they became a matriarchal society.

We continued driving until we reached the beach where the "Champagne Pools are located". That side of the island has white sand beaches with crystal clear, warm water. It is so beautiful.

The champagne pools were cool because you cannot swim in this area due to the high population of tiger sharks. In the pools, you were safe from the sharks and when the waves crashed over the rocks, the cascaded down into the pools as bubbles giving the look of champagne.

Next, we climbed up to the top of the "Indian Head" viewpoint. You could get a beautiful view of the beaches and we could spot tiger sharks, turtles and rays in the water below.

Champagne pools was our furthest destination, so as we drove back we kept an eye out for dingos along the road. We spotted a few and were surprised by how much they just looked like a regular dog. Apparently they were having a large issue on the island with dingos attacking people for their food, so a lot of precautions had been put in place to prevent any more attacks.

I had been sitting in the front seat all day and I can tell you first hand, our driver Christine was a terrible driver. She barely paid any attention and as soon as she started talking, she would literally turn 180 to look at the people in the back row while she was talking. It was terrifying. She was never looking at the road. There were a few times she almost ran into other cars or off the road. And yet the whole time, she kept bitching about other people irresponsibly parking their cars in the middle of the beach highway. Then, she got pulled over by the police for doing 66kph in a 40kph zone. She had not seen the speed limit sign change because she had been talking to the people in the back seat and almost didn't even notice the police pulling her over. The cop said he took a reading three times in case she was going to ever choose to slow down, which she didn't. She of course insisted on telling us what an asshole the cop was and saying it wasn't her fault. She got a ticket for $366 to which her response was that we'd better be tipping her today. I wanted to punch her because it was clearly her fault and there was no way I was going to tip her for putting my life in danger. Then, she does the exact same thing again. She was going 80kph when the limit changed to 40kph but she was looking into the back seat. I wasn't going to tell her because I thought it would serve her right to get two tickets but Alyssa told her to slow down. The picture below is of her getting alcohol and drug tested by the police.

Our last stop was at Lake McKensie. This was a beautiful perched lake which means that it sits atop compact sand and vegetable matter above the water table. It was filled entirely with rain water and the sand is nearly pure silica. We sent a half hour swimming in the very warm water and exfoliating our skin with the silica sand. Ten we piled back into the cars to board the ferry.

On the ferry, the treated us to coffee, cake and cheese which was a nice way to spend the half hour cruise. When we arrived back at Hervey Bay, we said goodbye to everyone who wasn't in our car and went to make hostel drop offs. On the way, we spotted tons of kangaroos in a field and stopped to watch them. They are so awesome! It's crazy the way they hop around and apparently they can move at really fast speeds.

We made it back to the hostel but we were so full from all the food they fed us that we decided to forgo dinner and just spend a quiet night at the hostel.

Posted with Blogsy