Fraser Island

I am sat in Peter Pans Travel Agents, lips parched from the constant exposure to air conditioning units, eyelids heavy and I am having trouble staying upright let alone attempting to describe to you my recent stay on Fraser Island, perhaps it’s because I am slowly succumbing to the exhaustion of a memorable but lengthy coach journey or maybe it’s the fact that sand remains lodged somewhere between my ear canal and brain. I think it will help if I start by telling you that Fraser is my favorite part of my Australian travels thus far, a time when fine people, situ and weather all amalgamated together to make an awesome few days. But when I signed up for this all I really knew was that I would be camping for a couple of nights on the world’s largest sand island with a couple of offroad cars to get around in.

There were just over thirty of us in the group with eight people packed into each of the four Toyota Land Cruisers. After a short crossing across a choppy sea, the tires rolled onto hard glassy sand that had been smoothed and compacted by lapping waves. Jimi Hendrix complimented the car’s rumbling engine and while our convoy continued ride along fringe of the island dried up jellyfish would pop under wheels and a combination of sand and salt would spray though the window, you would have the omnipresent taste of grit in your mouth and the sand left no surface untouched. Looking seaward it was so strange to see such a beautiful stretch of coastline and no swimmers but off course the seemingly inviting water concealed hazards of bull sharks, jellyfish and currents. Sometimes the tide would creep in too far and we’d have to penetrate the islands interior making runups to scramble up forest tracks so steep that the only thing windscreen showed was sky and sun, upon leaving the relative smoothness of shore, the bumps, jumps and ditches became far more frequent and depending on your disposition it was better to sit up front as the slightest jolt is magnified 10 fold by the time it reached the back, on more than one occasion the whole back row of seats came clean away from the floor and my head made firm contact with the roof. There were hairier moments like when one wave took us all by surprise and swept in rapidly; going at a considerable speed we aquaplaned swerving from side to side until finally coming to a halt in a soft sandy bank. It was one of those things that seemed to happen in slow motion.

The vehicle’s confined interior combined with the continuous jolts and served to break down any personal boundaries whilst we rolled over each other, thus I got to know our eight man team pretty well and realised that they were actually a decent bunch. I got on particularly well with a couple of lads from the Netherlands; Redmer and Erwin with unique personalities and always up for a laugh and then off course the Swedes; Tina and Clara, both a lot of fun, both possess remarkably malleable faces and have excellent tastes in music the great communicator. We would eat, drink and camp on the beach behind the dunes and palm tree, the tents were often invaded by translucent crabs that had shells of frosted glass, our grounds where encircled by dingoes who waited until we were all asleep to make off with any leftovers. The food that wasn’t stolen by wild dog or picked at by vultures we cooked ourselves and washed our plates in surf and sand. There were a fair few Irish in our group so when the night came so did the drinking games, sharing from the communal ‘goon’ esky, we drank and ran around the beach whilst I attempted to demonstrate rugby Clara showed her handball skills before we collapsed in a heap, later due to a ring of fire forfeit a New Yorker would pose in a compromising position on top of a car bonnet drinking a heinous concoction of alcohol out of a unwashed saucepan leftover from dinner… sooo ahnyway as you can imagine the evenings where pretty messy. 

Apart from drinking and the driving we trekked through a sea of sand that had ripples carved by wind, its probably the closest I’ve been to a desert and I had a little Laurence of Arabia moment. I dived into the serene freshwater of Lake McKenzie, where catfish glide along the bottom. We climbed some spectacular dunes; impossible to conquer by car they were almost vertical in height, a wall of sand that we all stumbled up whilst the sun baked down on perspiring bodies, it was exhausting but if you stopped you’d sink in a micro-avalanche of cascading sand. At the summit the views are beautiful; sunlight glistens over the bay picking up the shadows of other dunes and capturing the crests of waves far from shore. I sat here for a while. The way down was far more fun than the way up. Just take a run and jump, a leap of faith, when you land you are at the mercy of the laws of physics and hurtle like a ragdoll to the bottom, by the end you don’t know which way was up and sand has entered every orifice, but I guess it’s nice to know you’re taking a bit of Fraser with you wherever you go.

Run. Jump. Hope for the Best

The Sand Dune Wall

Team C. Best Team