Fraser Island

Another fantastic morning greets us I know I have said this before but it is no wonder everyone comes here for the winter. It is 20+ everyday and sun shining. It is however getting a bit cold at night and we are expecting minimums down to7 for the next week. Breakfast overlooking the dam this is heaven. This was just an overnight stop we are back off to Rainbow Beach today and then on to Fraser Island. It’s a 3 hour drive and we stop off at Maryborough for shopping. This is a big town but has lost its status a little of the last few years from Hervey bay ( they pronounce it Harvey??). We are camping at Inskip Point again tonight and will head off to Fraser Island in the morning. It is $90 for the barge $38 for a Vehicle permit and then $9.70 /night camping so it stretches our budget but you can’t come to QLD and not go to Fraser Island.Now I have this theory that the tourist operators will always tell you the fish are biting somewhere they are trying to get people to go to. Before the long weekend I saw in the news and on the TV that the fish are running at Rainbow Beach. Now I can tell you there are no fish at Rainbow beach at the moment and nor where there any on the weekend, cause all the people I spoke to said that as well.
Up early today, it has been a long time since we have slept in the car so we have to think hard what to take with us. We are leaving the van in a lock up in town. Next week we are driving back to Adelaide without the Van so some practice will be good. We are not sure which way we are coming back to Adelaide we will think about this later.

Over to the barge and we are on our way top Fraser Island. The tide is just low enough that we can make it past Hook Point. Fraser Island is awesome and we can see what all the hype is about. We drive along the beach for what seems forever and we come across our first Dingo. There are lots of small outlets or small creeks with water pouring back into the ocean. We have seen all photos of the cars washed into the ocean. There are some points where the water is close to rocks. We are always amazed at how much people love to drive in the ocean in their cars. I can understand the hire cars but not your own. The limit is 100km/h but even at 70 it seems more than fast enough.

We pull up at a beach side camp and set up camp. I’m keen to go fishing even though we didn’t catch anything at Inskip Point. Tina caught a nice Whiting but that was all our luck 4 bites 1 fish and it was all over. It is cold tonight and we even have to get the gas heater out as there are no fires allowed on Fraser.
I’m up early in search of fish and land my first ever Tarwine. They are very much like bream there are only 4 bites and I land two fish. We spend the day lazing around and fishing with a couple more whiting landed.

After the recent storms it seems that the every piece of rubbish form the Gold Coast has landed on Fraser Island. We collect 2 sacks of rubbish and that was only 400m of coast. The beach is over 100km long so we just imagine how much rubbish there is here. We think it should be compulsory that every tourist brings back a sack of rubbish.



The Dingos are quite interested in us and follow us down the beach and through our camp. It is freezing again tonight but the moon rise was incredibly spectacular. We receive a SMS form Mel asking if we are watching Spicks & Specks which we couldn’t but we watched the tide come in on Fraser Island instead a good substitute.

Today we are on the move so we drive inland for some sight seeing. It is beautiful place and a bit more hilly than I expected. We head back to the beach and then drive the inland road back towards where the barge launches. We are camping on the western side of the island and the spot apparently has aggressive Dingo’s. It is not as windy on this side and not as cold at night. There Dingo’s are a little more pushy here but we can still scare them off easily. It is a nice night but I think we drank to many Vodka’s.

The Dingo’s are howling at us this morning. We are up early and packed up and back over to the barge by 10.00am Fraser has been great but we are driving back to Brisbane today. The drive is OK and we make it back early afternoon.