Day 11 Of The East Coast

Day 11 Of The East Coast

Location: Fraser Island

Inskip Point - Hook Point-Fraser Island

We woke up early to the tarp flapping in the wind, it had rained a bit in the night but not too much thankfully. 

After breakfast we were faced with the task of organising all the food and packing everything away. 
It had been lovely staying in the same place for a few days, as it can become very tedious setting up and packing everything away everyday.


Luckily it didn't take too long and we were soon on our way to Rainbow beach. We were both sad to leave Cooloola as it had been the best camp spot so far.


We were pleased that the tide was out so we could take the Leisha track to Rainbow one last time.

Once we had stocked up on fuel, firewood and water it was onto Inskip point located north of Rainbow town.

We met a lovely local guy here fishing with his kids (who had caught a small shark). As we got chatting away he gave us some advice about Fraser which was VERY useful. 

From Inskip point we caught the Mantra Ray barge ($110 return) to Hook Point. Within 15 minutes we were on Fraser! - little did we know what we would be faced with ...

A bit of background for the unaware - the World Heritage listed Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. It's unique due to its freshwater lakes, creeks and dune lakes. It is also home to a 1,000 year old rainforest that defies mother nature surviving from nothing more than sand.
Fraser is also home to some of the most challenging 4wd tracks claiming many cars over the years!

The tide was in when we drove off the barge so we had to take the 35 km track to Dilli Village.

The track was incredibly bumpy. It was here that we saw our first Dingo (wild dog). He looked incredibly cute however they have a reputation for being viscous and have taken babies in the past! I reckon he was after Marcus's sardines chasing our car for a good 15 minutes!


This track went on for ages and in the end we pulled over for lunch. I was on edge looking out for dingos as I didn't fancy being attacked on the first day!

It was then back onto the bumpy track which eventually bought us out onto 75 mile beach.

This beach took huge to a whole new level, it was gigantic. Our camp spot at 'Waddy Point' was at the very top of the Island.

The beach went on for hours and we hardly saw anyone along the way, except for more dingoes and aeroplanes landing on the beach (crazy).

Compared to Cooloola the conditions on 75 mile beach were a lot worse. The sand was very deep and boggy in places with huge mini streams every couple of miles along, that we had to keep slowing down for.

The only stop we had along the beach was at the Maheno wreck. Built in 1905 in Scotland the ship was one of the first turbine-driven steamers. In 1935 the ship was towed to Japan for scrap - when they reached Queensland Waters a storm hit snapping the tow chain washing the ship onto Fraser Island's ocean beach. 
From what is left of the ship it is a spectacular site - of course I had to restrain Marcus from climbing aboard!

When we reached the end of the beach we then had to cross Indian head to drive over to Waddy Point. Again the drive went on forever both Marcus and I had seriously under estimated the size of the island!

Having driven over 4 hours we were both disappointed when we reached the beach front. Not only was there a lack of room but we were unable to get our car into the camp spot to set it up as usual.
We ended up driving back and finding an enclosed camp ground at the top where the dingos couldn't eat you!
Whilst it didn't have the views of the other camp spot it did have a toilet block and washing up area.
We found a good area and parked the car up.

As we were heading over to check the toilets out ... we heard a bubbling coming from underneath the bonnet. When we lifted the bonnet our engine coolant was boiling - not good.
At this point two Aussies came over to our car to take the piss out of us "buying a Jeep". Honestly at this point neither of us had any idea how serious it was, clearly the Aussies did though!
We just shrugged it off and blamed it on our 4 hour beach drive and thought the car would just cool down and be fine ...
We left the bonnet open to cool the engine down whilst we set up camp. It was at this point that we met 'Mick & Dave' two brilliant Aussie guys. Unlike the other two guys they came over to see if we needed help - not to laugh. The other two guys were obviously just nosy as they decided to reappear again which we didn't appreciate.
By this point the engine had cooled and so had the coolant and there wasn't much we could do until the morning.

So we had our dinner and sat around the fire pit roasting marshmallows- delicious! We hadn't a care in the world about the car - I was far more concerned by the colony of cane toads.

Please click here for more photos

Dingo - Video