16/ 17/18 10.07

FRASER ISLAND

After arranging the night before to get up “early”, Fred woke us at 0415which didn’t impress, however we got going and arrived at the Inskip ferry by 0630. It was a lovely morning with flat sea’s and warm. I had done some driving at Rainbow Beach but was still very apprehensive about this “beach driving”. We drove the beach up until Dilli Village where we went into the lakes road system. Yeah, right, roads! More like two wheel tracks in the scrub with scant room to pass another vehicle. Luckily we didn’t meet much traffic and when we did it was OK but there were some area’s that you would have to back up some distance, sometimes up hill in very loose deep sand, if you did. The tracks very very rough with large roots from the trees making it difficult to transverse and in the “really steep” parts there were timber slats and or rubber matting laid down. Drove a lot of it in low range but later found that it was OK in high.

Travelled to Lakes Bomanjin, Birrabeen and McKenzie all of which are magnificent, especially Lake McKenzie. The timber in that area and in Pile Valley is very tall with some huge trees left over from the logging days which make you wonder how big the others were if these were left.

Arrived at Eurong Beach Resort and booked into a top floor double bedroom apartment with lovely views over the huge pool and onto the beach beyond. It was all very comfortable although the girls reckon the cleaner had not done a very good job.

Fred and I went up the beach a few k’s and did some fishing were he caught some small dart and I jagged a 4foot Shovelnose Shark. Literally jagged him as after it was landed which took at least 20/25 minutes, I found that he was foul hooked in one of his wings but he had two hooks in his mouth! One unlucky or slow learning shark so we let him go to try again another day. There were small planes on the beach and again whales out in the ocean displaying their splashing techniques.

Second day Fred and I were up early and drove up as far as Happy Valley and fished on the way back with limited success only catching some very small dart. About lunch time the wind changed and it blew up a smart southerly and blew its guts out. We had seen whales earlier and also a light plane using the beach as the runway so Di and Pam decided they would go with us this time which was good as there were whales only a little way out from where we wereattempting to throw the lines into the wind but with that and the rip of the tide it was useless so we went for a drive up the beach to the Maheno wreck. This ship has been lying there slowly disintegrating since the 1930 ‘s and is an area that they are known to catch tailor. There were some diehard fishermen there and one had actually caught a tailor as we arrived, but most were catching dart which were a lot bigger than the ones we had caught earlier. I had a broccoli box with ice and a lot of bait left over so I gave it to one of the chaps there who in turn offered the tailor but one fish is not any good to anyone. It was interesting to note that they were all using Alvey Reels and were fishing a lot lighter than we would in the lower states for salmon. They use three gang hooks and pilchard but only a small ball sinker and keep belting it out.

By this stage I was getting quite used to the sand driving and feeling a lot more confident, the Prado with the larger Cooper tyres handles these conditions magnificently, in fact when we got back of the beach at Eurong after going through a long stretch of very soft and deep sand I went to take it out of four wheel drive when I discovered it had not been in all of the way up and back! Pretty impressive. I suggested that we go back to Hook Point via the inland road and nearly had my head knocked off by the passengers. It was bloody rough but at least I had the steering wheel to hang onto!

Wendesday evening we had a buffet meal at the resort which was quite good for a remote setting. It is interesting to note that all material from toilet paper up is brought over on the barges in large European made fourby and sixby trucks, ther are dozens of big all wheel drive buses and hundreds of Toyota’s Nissens etc most of which have the mandatory fishing rods on top.

We awoke on Thursday morning early to find it blowing even harder which had pushed the sea’s in a lot further than anticipated which made the driving a bit harder as we had to take the upper beach with the softer sand. There is an inland road 12 K’s north of Hook Point which was marked on our map as “bitumen road recommended for fourwheel drives”, yeah right, it may have been once but it wasn’t anymore, but it was least dry which wouldn’t have been the case on the beach.

As it turned out it was blessing as we met a young woman on the road who we had spoken to at church last Sunday. Her name is Jennifer and that for the last six years been going to the island and had been taking photos of dingoes, strange we thought. Anyway as we were going along this road we saw her on the side taking video footage. On stopping and remaking the connection she told us that there was a bitch and 7 pups there and she had been filming them. As we were talking to her one of the pups, named Coconut, came out of the scrub and onto the road right next to us. She said that she was writing a book and also filming a documentary on the dingoes of Fraser Island. As she has been doing this for so long she has probably more idea of the dingo population there than the local Parks people, although she didn’t say this.

The ferry back over to Inskip was a bit rocking and rolling but wasn’t too bad. We stopped off at Rainbow and washed the car at the car wash and arrived home about 1030 after a fabulous three days.