Sunday, 6 June 2010

Hervey Bay (Fraser Island) June 01-06


I had to decide between Hervey Bay and Rainbow Beach as my starting point for Fraser Island. Since I am not the fastest traveller I choose the more northern City.
The YHA Collonial Village is a nice place and it looks more like a camping site than a hostel. Apparently space is becoming less of a concern the further north you go. Even the smallest streets are a lot bigger than back home. The hostel has its own tennis court, ping pong table and a good pool.
My skin deteriorated all of a sudden and so I decided to take it easy for a couple of days to let it get better before going to Fraser Island. Kinda fed up with all these delays and so I need to travel faster from now on.
Initially, I wanted to book a self drive tour on Fraser but as I didn’t feel well during the days before, I chose the guided tour where you can sleep in a hostel room rather than the sandy campground.
Driver was 8 minutes early and so everybody on the bus had to wait for me. Even the hostel staff was already looking for me.

Fraser Island consist of 99% sand and a wee volcanic material. Being 123 km long and 22 km wide it is the world’s biggest sand island and for some reasons different types of forest were able to settle. Depending on how much minerals the trees have already absorbed the color of sand changes every few kms. About 700-2000 Aboriginals (depending on the season) used to live there, but they were deported when the island was discovered by the logging industry.

The shuttle got us down to River Heads where the ferry was already waiting for us. The journey took about 35min and we saw something that some identified as dolphins.

 Fraser Venture
 

Hervey Bay is one of the best places for whale watching but unfortunately I am a month early. After disembarking from the ferry I was placed in a bus where I met 2 nice German girls (Anna and Lena). The bus for the one-day tour had a puncture and so I was happy I had someone to chat with while waiting. The 3 of us got a ride to the meeting point where we picked up the other people from Rainbow Beach to complete our group.
There was Shane our guide and driver, Anna, Lena, 2 girls from Utah¸ who rather wanted to be left alone, 3 girls from Devon, UK who also didn’t want to talk to anybody else, Hanna (my room mate) a girl from Japan and a French Family from Paris (Charlie, Emma¸ Arthur and Raffael). Most of the time it was Anna, Lena, Hanna¸ the family and me hanging out together.
After meeting the other group we went for a walk thru the rainforest. There are several types of forests on the island (sub tropical, mediterean style and what we are used to from back home. There are dozens of creeks on Fraser and the one we saw was crystal clear with what appeared to be a type of eel in it. I have seen some forests before in Byron or Noosa but this one is just gorgeous with huge trees up to 3m in diameter and giant ferns.
Afterwards we visited Lake McKenzie the most photographed spot on the entire Island

 Lake McKenzie - best lake I have ever been to

There are more than 100 fresh water lakes on Fraser. Crystal clear blue water with a stunning view and it just feels like paradise (the Aboriginal name for Fraser, roughly translated, means paradise so they were aware of the beauty). I didn’t have a mask with me but you could probably see 40m under water. This was the absolute highlight of the tour. After one of the French kids mistook the lake for a bathroom we packed up and went on.
Big respect credit for Shane for driving that enormous bus on these small sandy roads. It was quite a bumpy ride and it would have taken me ages if I had to be behind that wheel.
Next stop was Lake Basin

 Lake Basin



Hardly anyone ever comes here but it was worth a visit. We had a lesson on Aboriginal history which was quite depressing. They had and still have a pretty rough life in this white men’s world.
After that we went back to the resort for a Mexican dinner and some drinks at the bar afterwards.
Next day started at 8:00h and we drove on 75-Mile-Beach to Indian Head a volcanic Rock were James Cook saw some Aboriginals and back in the day all indigenous people were called Indians.

75 Mile Beach - some years ago there was no speed limit at all

Speed limit on the beach is 80 and there are even some policemen enforcing that. But with all the sand piles you can hardly go 80.
You could see some turtles and rays from Indian Head but it was not that impressive. This is actually the most easterly point of Australia but since it is on a sand island it does not count for the mainland and so Byron Bay gets those credits.
On the way back we made a stop at a shipwreck that used to be a luxury liner and got washed up on shore during a small typhoon. During WWII it was used as a practising target. 400 bombs were dropped on the wreck but only two actually hit the vessel.

 Maheno Shipwreck

Next up was Eli Creek and Lake Wabby. You had to walk 40 min thru the forest and cross a giant sand blow to get to that lake. There are 14 species of fish in the lake and some cheeky catfish strolling around the shallow. The water was much colder than Lake McKenzie and so I chickened and didnt go swimming.

 Eli Creek

Lake Wabby

wild Dingo

After bidding the rest of the group good bye Lena, Anna and me took the ferry back to the mainland. Going west we had a wonderful sunset and it was the appropriate ending for a fantastic time on Fraser Island. Just awesome to the max.

Next day I finally purchased my bus ticket. So far I was always using specials to go from one place to another. I didn’t find any special rate to travel to Agnes Water and so I finally bought my hop-on-hop-off ticket. That is $203 for 2080km all the way up to Cairns. Quite a good deal, I reckon.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Duli,

    That must have been a fantastic trip to Fraser. While i´m reading your text I remember all these things when i was there in 2005.

    keep rockin
    Andi

    ReplyDelete