Fraser Island

Fraser Island is a fantastic place. Pie and I spent two full days there. The island is 123km long, and is just one huge sandbank. Over the years, plants have grown there and the area is one of the most interesting environments you can go to. From west to east across the island, there are mangrove swamps, normal swamps, normal forest areas, tropical rainforests, crystal clear lakes, then white sandy beaches. Alongside the beach there are huge peaks of varying colours made out of hard dried sand. Then on the beach there are big black rocks, made out of sand.

The best thing about the island though is that you can hire 4 wheel drive vehicles and drive over the island. The inner tracks vary from hard sand roads which are very bumpy, to tracks made out of soft dry sand which it is very easy to get stuck in. And accordingly, about three seconds after I first tried driving on the island, I got stuck in some soft dry sand. Fortunately, there were some vehicles coming the other way containing large numbers of backpackers, mainly the scantily clad female variety, who were able to push the vehicle out of the hole, so it wasn't all bad. To give myself some credit for once, the area I got stuck in was one of the most difficult areas on the island, and I only got stuck because I saw the vehicles coming the other way and tried to pull in to a passing place.

Even better fun than the internal tracks though is driving along the eastern beach. It is called 75 mile beach, which should give you a clue that it's fairly long. You can pelt along the beach at 80kmph watching out for 'washouts', which is where the streams on the island empty into the sea, vehicles coming the other way, and the occasional plane landing on the beach.

We did of course check out the crystal clear lakes, and they were lovely and warm to swim in. The two negatives of the island were that it was extremely humid and the number of sandflies. Apparently sandflies don't bite, they just urinate on you, which causes a reaction.