The eastern beach acts as the highway (with an 80km speed limit). Only 4WD vehicles are allowed on the island and loads of people still get stuck on the sandy roads that wind through the forest. We had to tow one guy back up the track so he could get a better run at it, and this group got stuck on the beach. There are 52 freshwater lakes on the island and Eli Creek pours 4.5 million litres per hour into the sea. So you wade up the creek, and then float back down to the beach.
The SS Maheno was wrecked in 1935 by a cyclone (whilst being towed to Japan as scrap). Fraser Island is meant to have one of the purest strains of Dingoes but we didn’t see any. In the past, people would feed them, so the dingoes got bolder and very occasionally grabbed a small child that had been allowed to roam by its parents. Consequently, the government recently shot hundreds of these ‘aggressive’ dingoes. Why didn’t they just ban bite-sized children and stupid adults who think it’s cute to feed ‘the nice doggies’?
Did get to see this nice Carpet Python and there were some fresh water turtles in Lake Birrabeen (you can’t swim in the sea because of rip tides, sharks and stinging seaweed).We drove (bounced) back to the ferry dock to be told the barge had broken down and we had 1 hr to get to Kingfisher Bay on the other side of the island if we wanted to catch another one. This bit was far more fun as the driver had to thrash it so that we didn’t miss the boat. Arrived at Kingfisher in time for a quick beer before boarding the ferry at sunset.
