Fraser Island

One day is not long enough in Fraser Island. We knew this before we departed on on our pricey "exclusive" tour with the Fraser Island Company, but it couldn't be helped. We had whiled away a good chunk of our time in the "liveable city" of Melbourne -- in fact, we agreed so much with the epithet that we moved in, spending over a week there (of our paltry three total in Australia). With a country so vast and with such daunting distances between sites, you need to prioritize quickly, especially with limited time. Our plan was to try to see some highlights of the east coast, flying into Melbourne and out of Brisbane with our thick packet of Emirates tickets that cover all our international travel for our entire three-month, four-country jaunt. Just as Kalula and 1time had done for us in South Africa, Virgin Blue helped us get around within Australia quickly and as economically as can be expected when jet fuel is involved.

Moving north, we flew from Melbourne to Sydney and then from Sydney to Cairns, the major Great Barrier Reef gateway. Since leaving Sydney, we were in a bit of a crunch to visit the destinations at the top of our list (the Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsundays, and -- if time permitted -- Fraser) while working our way south to Brisbane. We're weren't exactly rushing, so much as we were conscious of planning ahead and making sure we had realistic transportation arranged -- few people would enjoy boarding a boat at 6 a.m. after spending 11 uncomfortable hours upright on a frequently stopping overnight bus. This meant that we had two long -- but not unpleasant -- driving days, nine hours between Cairns and Airlie Beach, the Whitsundays gateway and 11 hours between Airlie Beach and Hervey Bay, the Fraser Island gateway. The tropical scenery of the Queensland coast was both lovely and surprisingly varied and the two-lane road meant that you were close enough to actually enjoy it. Our only frustration was the instability of the signal for our favorite Aussie station as we drove through areas where the land is too sparsely inhabited to justify a radio tower. (You can listen to Triple J here.)

So we boarded the ferry bound for the world's largest sand island, having traveled a long way to see it and read a good deal about it, but still finding the idea of the place too strange to know exactly what to expect. In our imaginings it seemed highly unlikely that anything could manage to stay put on a seemingly inconstant surface. But soon after our four-wheel drive minibus disembarked onto the beach in a manner similar to the D-day landings (minus enemy gunfire), all our prejudices against sand as a growing medium were erased.

As we were promised, there were unbelievably tall trees and plenty of lush Jurassic-looking vegetation, anchoring themselves remarkably well and thriving for what must be ages to grow so large.

Though our tour guide did his best to diminish our hopes of seeing dingos (which he said had been culled by the park service to near extinction after a nine-year-old boy was tragically malled to death), we did spot two young males to our great satisfaction.

They were a lovely honey color with a hint of rust and extremely lean -- very handsome dogs indeed and, of course, didn't appear to be threatening at all. Then our self-avowedly eccentric guide showed us a photo of his daughter with a dingo, along with a laminated article about the dog's unfortunate demise. Thinking he'd like to have a uniquely Australian pet after immigrating from Germany, he had illegally obtained a dingo puppy from a hunter. But I suppose it doesn't take long for word to get back to the authorities that you've been seen walking your wolf around town. Neither the tears of his children nor appearances on the morning talk shows were sufficient to save their dingo.

Besides seeing Fraser's most famous inhabitants, walking around the gorgeously decaying Maheno Wreck was the highlight of our short visit. As we were angling for better photos, we noticed one large and photogenic jelly fish among what appeared to be many smaller cousins.

Slightly buried in the compacted beach sand, the tiny ones had long blue curling tentacles. Thinking better of our bare feet, we walked back to the truck to ask our guide about them. In his thick German accent he explained that they were the famously painful Blue Bottles. "Probably don't want to step on those" he said with a smile.

By Meredith Bragg |  March 23, 2006; 12:21 AM ET  | Category:  Australia , Tales From The Road/Skies
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