Noosa and Fraser Island
I saw the sunrise on my way to the bus station leaving Brisbane, I’ve been seeing an awful lot of those lately. The bus was to Noosa, where the Noosa river comes to the ocean, with the everglades along the river. It’s also surrounded by great beaches and great coastline. I just had one day here, hence the early bus, and the weather was perfect for it. Walking through the national park here reminded me of the Abel Tasman park in NZ somewhat, great beaches, secluded coves, not many people around, hiking through natural bush…
The next morning I left Noosa and got on another bus for 5 hours, up to Hervey Bay, springboard for my Fraser Island trip. The trip I booked for Fraser Island was for a guided tour of 2 days, 1 night on the island. I was picked up from my hostel at 7:00 (after seeing another sunrise, I’m almost used to this now) and instead of taking the ferry from Hervey Bay to Fraser Island we drove an hour and a half South to Rainbow Beach to pickup more people and took the ferry to the other end of the island from there. This wasn’t ideal because we weren’t on the island until around 9:30, on a 2 day schedule time is short and I would’ve probably booked a different tour that actually took the ferry in Hervey Bay if I would have realized this.
The reason I booked with the company I did, was because they promised groups of 14 people maximum (instead of the 40 many companies say), and in reality our group only had 7 people in it. The weather was cloudy and wet when we arrived on the island, where that came from I have no idea, but it cleared off somewhat as the day went on. There are no real roads on Fraser Island, just tracks through the sand (the island is the largest sand island on earth). So to get up and down the island you drive on the beaches and to get across you drive these sand tracks through the bush and sub tropical rainforest. We walked through some of this rain forest, more interesting than the temperate stuff I’ve been seeing for a while now but it’s still not real tropical rainforest, I have to wait another week for that…
You can’t swim in the ocean around Fraser because it’s a breeding ground for tiger sharks, for swimming options you have to head inland on the island to the lakes. The lakes are all freshwater, some fed by the water table underneath the island and some fed by rainfall. The one we stopped at, Lake Makenzie, is fed by rainfall, surrounded by superfine white sand and has vivid blue colours in it. Not too cold either, pretty nice…
The 2nd day on the island we saw the Indian head lookout, some different coloured sand formations and many freshwater streams running into the sea. The weather had cleared off overnight and was a warm sunny day, making everything look much nicer.
The downside of being able to drive up and down the beach is, everyone is driving up and down the beach. This isn’t even peak season here yet either. There’s just something about seeing tyre tracks all over the beach with jeeps coming and going that takes away from the island experience, there’s also a fair few tour groups and due to either tide levels or poor planning (or the tour drivers want to stand around and talk to each other, my bet).
I wont be recommending the company I went with to anyone, mainly because I wasn’t too thrilled with the guide and the departure, although I don’t think, from what I saw of them, the other tour companies would’ve been much better. The best way to see this island would be in your own 4×4 (not crammed in with 10 other people like the backpacker “self drive tours”), but for those of us with no experience driving in such conditions the options aren’t that many. The island’s cool, a lot bigger than I though it was though. An extra day would’ve been ideal to see more of the lakes and sand dunes, and some magical powers to make the bus loads of people vanish into the air.
Next stop, Great Barrier Reef!
Tags: Australia, Travel
Adam
beautiful!
Waht’s this goatee about?? >:[
sexyness