Tuesday January12th

Another day, another island! This time Fraser Island which is a World Heritage Site and the largest sand island in the world and the only place where rainforest grows on sand. It is about 123kms long and averages 15 kms wide and the local Butchulla people call it K'Gari or Paradise for obvious reasons. Inland the vegetation includes dense tropical rainforest, wild heath, wetlands and giant sand dunes as well as the unusual freshwater lakes with their astonishing turquoise water. We visited one of these, a perched ridge lake, called Mackenzie Lake, incredibly pure water which is so pure nothing can live in it.

 

To gain World Heritage status the Australian government had to stop the logging which was prevalent on the island, and to their great credit they took on the timber barons and closed the industry on the island down.

 

In the middle of the island is the ranger centre at Central Station, once the home to workers on the island, now the starting point for trails through the forest.

 

 

The main highway on the island is the beach

 

 

and all the other roads are ridiculously unstable sand tracks, often with deep ruts, like being on a roller coaster careering from one side to another. For this reason only 4wd vehicles are allowed, and serious 4x4s, not the Chelsea tractor kind! However, absolutely anyone with a drive g licence can hire one and the consequent chaos can be rather daunting!

 

After a buffet lunch at one of the island resorts we were taken to see the wreck of the Maheno,a former passenger liner and later used as a hospital ship in Gallipoli, which was blown ashore by a cyclone in 1935.

 

 

 

North of the wreck are The Pinnacles, an eroded section of coloured sand cliffs.

 

 

Before returning to the ferry we went to Eli Creek a fast moving , crystal clear waterway draining into the sea. We paddled upstream for a little beneath the scrubby bushes, but my most vivid memory is of all the 4x4s lined up along the edge of the creek like so many bizarre animals at a watering hole!

 

I felt that I had learned such a lot from the visit , about eco systems, land formations, flora and fauna, and a little about the tourist industry. Over 360,000 people visit the island every year and I only hope the island can sustain this. As with every brilliant Australian attraction there is a scary side. On Fraser Island it is dingoes, a sort of wild dog which can be very aggressive and there are notices everywhere warning not to feed them, not to run if confronted with one (the advice was to stand still, shout for help and stare it down; fat lot of good shouting for help I thought!)

 

However, a brilliant day and such a lovely place.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 13th January

 

 

Leaving our beach side camp site

 

 

 

we continued our journey south and reached the upmarket resort town of Noosa. It is very developed and there are some stunning homes overlooking the ocean. The town itself boasts lots of trendy boutiques, many of them surf related, some expensive restaurants and popular cafés and the beach is crystalline with a backdrop of rainforest.

 

 

 

From a point above the town, Laguna Lookout, we had a marvellous view.

 

 

We were so glad we had changed our itinerary to include Noosa. After some shopping (Charles) and some realising that I might be a little too old for some of the beach fashions, we headed inland to a town I had been looking forward to visiting as the guide book said it was a haven for crafts of all kinds. Eumundi certainly lived up to its reputation as we arrived on the day of the craft market, but even better was the amazingly well stocked bookshop

 

 

and the incredibly helpful owners who spent quite a lot of time advising me on which history of Australia would be a good start. (I have been reading Peter Carey's Amnesia which has quite a lot of political references way above my head.)

 

Continuing inland we drove up the impossibly steep ridge to Montville, Kimberley and Mapleton all villages specialising in country crafts, cheese making(bought( some delicious yoghurt), sweet production (the fudge was ....) and wood turning (the most beautiful vase made from elm and many other treasures) then to Maloney, which we discovered was very near the Mary Cairncross Scenic Park which had been recommended to us. We followed a trail through the park, hoping to walk off the fudge! then made our first mistake. As there were very few campsites about and it was getting late in the afternoon we decided to find a hotel for the night. We turned down the  Maleny hotels thinking we would find somewhere livelier, but this was not to be. Despite trying several in Brisbane we were unable to find anything suitable (we wanted to be off early and no one could accommodate this) so, to cut a long story short, we decided to press on to Byron Bay. Mistake number 2 was that we had forgotten the time difference between Queensland and New South Wales and when we got here everything was shut!