Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

Fraser Island is the Largest Sand Island in the world. Which means there are no man-made roads only sand tracks, hence riding only on 4 wheeled drives.
We headed to the Central Station and went for a nice 2km walk through Pile Valley. This is where they have rainforests - the only one to grow from sand.
We went to the resort of Eurong to have some lunch and enjoy the views from the soft sandy beach. We had to be quite careful getting to the sea as had to look both ways to cross the sand - the beach is one of the main roads on Fraser Island!

Beach Dual carriageway

On our walk back to the resort there were a few people who had got stuck in the sand trying to cross the beach in their 4x4 - so we decided to take some photos!!
We went along the beach in our bus - the beach is called 75 mile beach, cos its 75 miles long. We got to Eli Creek where James walked up the creek and floated back down.

Floating about in the Creek

At this stage I didn't get in the water, just paddled as the water was flippin freezing!
Back onthe bus and along the beach to get to Indian Head. We walked to the top of the hill and admired the blue sea and sand dune views. In the water below us we saw a sting ray and shark swimming about. We weren't allowed to swim in the sea as the guide said the currents were strong and there were a few sharks about - enough said!
We stopped to take photos of the Maheno Wreck - a wreck that is lodged in the sand on the beach and is quite rusty, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Maheno Wreck

We went back to Eurong Resort where we are staying the night. We had dinner and met up with some of the people on the tour in the bar for a few drinks and general chit chat.

May 8
James arose very early as he wanted to get pictures of the sun rise from teh beach. I stayed in bed as it was far too early to get up! He managed to get some good photos, it was a bit cloudy though. He decided to come back when he felt a couple of spots of rain, He took about 4 steps and the heavens opened - he came back to the room looking like a drowned rat!!
We had breakfast and back onto the big bus. We went for a long walk over the sand blow (just a big sand dune to you and me) to get to Lake Wabby. This is a green lake that is at the bottom of a large sand dune. We swam in it for a bit, quite cool but refreshing after the long walk to get to it. James went for a walk witha couple of others to get to a lookout point, on the way back he couldn't resist running down the sand dune into the water with photos taken of him going from the top to the bottom.

Run forest

He's fallen in the water

We had lunch at Eurong resort again before heading to the best place on Fraser Island - Lake McKenzie. We arrived on the white sandy beach and looked at the crystal clear blue lake and thought we were in paradise! The lake was 26 degrees, so just right for swimming.

Thats pretty Blue.

We couldn't stay there all day, which was a shame as we had to catch the 4pm ferry back to the mainland.

Cheese

In the evening we met up with a couple (James and Jill) from the tour for dinner and drinks at the pub. They have been living in New Zealand and travelled round there so we got a few pointers about what to see, plus a basic map of what route to go - sorted!

Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

Torquay, Australia