Fraser Island (Australia)

Ola all!!


Let me start by saying that Fraser Island is one of the highlights of our trip, even in bad weather conditions. This island is classified as a World Heritage Site and it well deserves the title: it is the biggest sand island in the world, covering 120 Km in length and with the highest dune hitting 240m above sea level. Since it is all sand, only 4WD vehicles make it through it's unpaved roads. We opted to do a guided two day tour and avoid getting stuck on a self drive experience (we learned our lesson well in Chile). We arrived by ferry, and Rossco our guide drove us straight off the boat and onto the beach (later telling us the bus sometimes gets stuck on the beach)!



For a place that is in essence a massive sand dune, Fraser Island is teaming with life through very diverse ecosystems. For example, this is the only place in the world where a rainforest has grown on sand. Admitedly the soil is less rich and some of the tree growth less than in other places but it is still pretty impressive. Just look at the size of this tree. For years the island was an important site in the logging industry until it's declaration as a protected site ended it in the 1990's.






We had a chance to wander around the rainforest and gasp at the trees. This one is a 300 years old Fig tree. It started its life as a seed left on top of another tree by a bird. It then grew branches from the top of the tree down, reaching the soil and creating roots. Over the years, more and more fig branches surrounded the host tree. Eventually, the branches fuse together into a structure that can support itself while the host tree gradually starves. The hollow interior of fig trees provide shelter to loads of wildlife and their structure is so stable that aboriginals took refuge in them during hurricanes.

I also made my peace with the eucalyptus trees during the visit to Fraser Island. In Portugal, the eucalyptus is seen as a plague since it outgrows our native trees and quickly takes over forests. Moreover it is so good at collecting water that it dries to soil for miles around it. Here I grew to appreciate all the different types of eucalyptus (there's over 400 different types in Australia) and actually grew to appreciate some of them. Below are photos of the paperbark and the scribbly eucalyptus, so named for obvious reasons.

So there I was wondering around the forest, too amazed by the trees, when I was attacked by this thing that looked like a giant-lettuce from outer space!

Actually it's a moose something but I unfortunately forgot the name... It just grows on trees' trunks and branches but its harmless for the trees (or so they say, but I have my doubts, I'm sure these aliens prowl the forest at night and that's why some of the birds in the island are disappearing).

After our walk in the rain forest we hit the 90 mile beach, which surprise, surprise, is a beach that runs for 90 miles on the east side of the island. (Let me make a parenthesis here to comment on the english lack of imagination when it came to naming places: the names are either too literal or named after the queen/king or a repetition of older names from England like Paddington, Kings Cross or even Hyde Park). It's a beautiful beach but unfortunately its waters are a death trap: if you manage to safely negotiate its strong currents you will then have to deal with the massive sharks patrolling these waters, and to take care of any unlikely survivours there are still the tiny but highly venomous jelly fish!

Halfway along the beach there's the wreck of the Maheno, a luxury passenger boat at the beggining of the 20th century. It doesn't look like much now but neither would anything hit by a cyclone in 1935 (which forced it to hit the beach) and later used for target practice by the Australian Navy and Aviation during WWII.

Further along the beach we found what initially had attracted me to Fraser: dingos! This one was refreshing itself on the wet sand and quite simply didn't bother to even look at us. Dingos are so used to tourists that some of them became aggressive while tryng to get some food from them. But not this one, he was just to cool in his pose to move...

Half way along the beach there's Eli Creek, the place where we finally got a chance to get wet! With the temperature nearly under 30C, it took Tom one run down the creek before I could be persuaded to go in. The water is clear and flows with reasonable strength so you can race down the creek. Unfortunately in some places the creek is less the 50cm deep and you can get easily stuck.

The island also has the biggest concentration of spiders we ever came across. Particularly concentrated are the golden orb spiders, which reach a lengh of 15cm! Their name comes from the huge 1.5m wide orb-shaped webs, which have a golden tinge. Aparently these "little" beautied produce the toughest silk known to men (something like 10x stronger than steel, per weight) and are now being used to produce a new generation of bullet proof vests (note for fellow molecular biologists: they actually put the gene coding for the "strength" protein in goats so that they can extract it in large scale from their milk). But are the webs strong enough to stop one certain portuguese person? The answer is no, as we found out when she walked straight through one of the massive webs (sigh...). Actually, seeing the huge spider climbing up the remnants of its web towards my face was one of the scariest things I've seen in my life! Give me the wild dingos any day.

We had a really good campsite, plus an aussie style barbecue with the rest of the group. We both slept well, apart from awaking to an irish girl shouting "I'm not coming back from the loo, theres a big dingo looking right at me!". As we left in the morning, a 1.5m Lace Monitor (affectionately know as a Lace Goana) came to see us off. The guide warned us that goanas have been know to climb up people when they panic but that they choose the tallest one, so I was quite safe.













After one night wondering what were all those noises we could hear (I'm sure some were the Giant Lettuces hunting around), we started our second day on the island with a walk over the sand dunes. Here theres a strange "equilibrium" going on: the rainforest grows over the dune and gradually takes over the landscape until a massive sand storm restructures it by covering the forest in sand. It's been like that since ever, creating layers of sand and forest debris. The scale of the sandscape is incredible, and was one of the best sights on the island.











At one point, Rossco suddenly zipped off down one of the dunes, shortly followed by the rest of the group in a number of interesting different styles!


































Take only memories, leave only footprints........


















After all this activity, we deserved a relaxing time in one of the many rain water lakes in the island. Lake Birrabeen has white sand beaches and pristine blue water. And the sun even put on an appearance for a change! The sand here is full of sillica and very fine which makes it great for esfoliating one's skin. Hum... What a great way to say goodbye to Fraser Island.

We returned for a night in the Colonial Village YHA in Hervey Bay, which is the best hostel we have stayed in so far, with a pool, tennis court, barbecues, free wine.....aahhh!
Sadly, our next night was completely the opposite. We made a quick stop in Rockhampton on the way to Airlie Beach, to avoid having to take a bus for 13hrs. We arrived in Rockhampton at night to an unbelievable amount of insects at the bus station, and a bad smell. As we made our way to the hostel, hoping that this was a one-off and not a taster of the conditions in the tropical north of Queensland, the bus driver told us that the smell was due to the recent floods. Not the floowater itself, but some cattle that had been swept from the fields got stuck under bridges, and were rotting. Eeeuuuww. The hostel itself was not nice, with loads of mosquitos/flies/cockroaches in the kitchen. The next day we hastily made our exit, for another all day bus up to Airlie Beach.

Until next time,

Vania