Rainbow Beach / Fraser Island

First time in this sea at Rainbow Beach!

We got up at 5am, got ourselves sorted, and left for the 50 minute walk to the bus station. We had so much weight to lug across the city, and it was so hot even at that time of the morning, we made it bang on time, but we weren’t a pretty site! The 5 hour journey to Rainbow Beach went reasonably fast, and it was a gorgeous day once again. It’s been bliss. We were staying in a nice little beach house type hostel, with a nice outside seating area. We had some lunch and then made a beeline for the beach! It was so lovely. We walked along the shore for a bit, saw the ‘rainbow sands’ even though it was just a bit of white sand, and a different shade of yellow sand, interesting but not particularly exciting. We wandered back to the populated area of the beach. As we’d walked through the sea, parts of it felt fairly warm, and because it was so hot, I was really tempted to go in (not very brave when it comes to the sea). A big cloud was looming, so we just laid on the sand for a bit and waited for it to pass. Once it had and the heat was on us again, Phil ran back to the hostel to get his swimming shorts, and then we went in! It was a little cold at first but after a minute it really felt warm and we were both right under. Only the third time in my life that I have properly been in the sea! I loved it! We let the waves push us about for ages, went under plenty of times, got too much sea water in our mouths and eyes. Then we got a bit brave and went further out to bob over the big waves before the folded. Enjoyed that for a while but got out of our depth, couldn’t touch the bottom of the sea and we were stuck going backwards and forwards in the middle of two waves. I began to panic as a few of the big waves went over my head and I couldn’t breath, Phil began to panic because even he couldn’t touch the floor and no matter how hard he swan and tried to drag me forwards, we just didn’t get anywhere. There was a guy near us on the verge of helping us out when a really big waves brought us forward so far we could touch the ground again and were able to fend for ourselves. After that we’d both had enough of the sea and sand so showered off and went back to the hostel! After dinner we had a little wander into the village, found a free internet café which was great, went to the supermarket and then pretty much went to bed. Early morning again the next day for our day trip to Fraser Island!

Beautiful Lake McKenzie on Fraser Island

Us swimming in Lake McKenzie

 We were up and ready by the time our tour came and picked us up at 8.30am. We had a broken nights sleep thanks to a very noisy snoring Norwegian in our dorm! We got on the 4WD bus and got going. We drove to ‘Inskip Point’ where we boarded a barge to take us across to the island. We watched over the edge as we went across as he’s told us you can sometimes see dolphins and turtles in the water, but we didn’t see any! We got to Fraser, and began a fairly long drive to the South end of the island, along the beach. It’s a real skill driving in the sand, and the whole island is just sand, so you have to know what you are doing if you were to hire a 4x4 and explore it yourself. It is much like driving in the snow or muddy conditions, except if you get really stuck, it’s a lot more difficult to get out. We came a across a few groups of teens who’d done exactly that, and then themselves sliding all over the place and losing things of the roof, or getting stuck on a hill, the tour operators weren’t impressed! Our guy was very informative through the drive down the beach. Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world, it is about the same size as Singapore, and it is believed to have enough sand to cover the Sahara Desert (which is almost equivalent size to North America). It is home to loads of different bird species, sea eagles, oyster catchers, which we saw a couple of, and the dingo! We eventually turned off the beach and drove firstly through the open eucalyptus forest (where no koalas live) and then right through the sub tropical rainforest. It had some really interesting trees. Eventually we reached Lake MacKenzie. As we walked down to the lake front, we came across a dingo! He was just laying at the side of the path, chilling out. We both freaked out at first and started to back off, but then we noticed it had some sort of tag on it’s neck and figured it was either owned by someone or just was known in the area. We acted calm and strolled past! We reached the lake. Wow. It was as clear as tap water, and as blue as the sky, never seen anything like it, apart from at a swimming pool! But this was natural, absolutely stunning. Surrounded by lush green rainforest and pure white silicone sand. The image that was in front of us was how tropical paradise would be described. However, to ruin our enjoyment there were loads huge horse fly looking things landing on us every second and biting. They were not afraid of a swinging hand coming to hit it and soon we were swatting and running around like idiots! We figured the best way to resolve it was to get in the water. It was a little chilly at first, Phil made it in quickly as he discovered the flies would just died as soon as you went under water, so I slowly followed and the water began to feel so warm. It was incredible. The water apparently has anti aging properties, so hopefully I undid a little of the damage the sun  has probably done to my skin! We stayed in the water a while, it was just so nice. But as we didn’t bring towels we figured we’d better get out so sit in the sun for a bit and dry off. Flies soon came back and we still managed to get bitten several times, nasty little bites they gave too. After a while, lunch was ready and we were served up a huge steak and a sausage, and then had a buffet of pastas and salad, it was delicious! Best food we’ve eaten in a while. So nice to have something other than tins or noodles! We really enjoyed that. The alcohol and soft drinks was free too so we made use of a couple of beers. After lunch we set off through the rainforest further and stopped at a point to take a little walk along a freshwater creek. I was a bit edgy of insects but it was a long a nice boardwalk. Laughing kookaburras, snakes and various other things lived in the rainforest and do get spotted, but we didn’t see any! The creek was deadly silent as there are no rocks along it, just sand, back when aboriginal people lived there, they wouldn’t know that there was a freshwater creek running through the middle until they happened to stumble across it. He stopped us at one point and pointed out the only plant that grew out of the creek, a specie of fern. This particular fern was over 2000 years old, despite only being the side of a large pot plant. Fraser island is also the only place in the world where that particular species grow! Interesting stuff. So when we had finished we got on the move to finish the tour and head back to the barge. It was a very bumpy ride to get back, and a few difficult parts for the guide to manoeuvre, as the tide was coming in fast. We made it to the barge and crossed back over to Rainbow Beach, where we stopped on the grass for ‘afternoon tea’ which was lovely! Then we said we were OK to be left where we were, as we were only a short walk back to our hostel and we wanted to go to beach again. We sat in the TV lounge for the evening once we got back, we didn’t need any dinner that night!

Walking through the rainforest on Fraser Island