Fraser Day 2

Wading up Eli Creek

Crab on the Maheno wreck

The Maheno wreck

The Maheno wreck

At Lake McKenzie

The beach is also an airstrip...

The Maheno wreck

Lake McKenzie

Walking Wanggoolba Creek

Walking along Wanggoolba Creek

Wanggoolba Creek

I was lying in bed this morning before the others woke up and it suddenly hit me – our time on Fraser Island is pretty much the end of the holiday. We’ve only got about a week to go and apart from a few travelling nights it will all be staying with friends and family (which I’m looking forward to) once we leave here. A few days ago when I was sick of all the one nighters and driving driving driving I was happy for it to finish, but now I’m not so sure, not quite mentally ready. Nick says that he’s completely in denial, but we’re both glad that we got to come to Fraser Island and it’s a pretty nice place to finish off the camping bit.

We’ve had a great day today, dictated by the tide of course as you can only drive inland in the mornings at the moment. So we started with a walk along the Pile Valley Circuit which left from the campsite and followed the Wanggoolba Creek through the rainforest. It’s a beautiful creek, crystal clear water as there are hardly any nutrients in the waters here to colour them. The only water in the island’s creeks and lakes is rainwater, and with the white sandy bottom it’s as clear as glass. After that we drove to Lake McKenzie which is treated like the beach here, it was full of backpackers and some families lying on the sand by the water’s edge sunning themselves, and swimming in the lovely clean water. We had a dip and a play in the sand followed by lunch – all these sort of places have a fenced picnic area to keep dingoes away, which feels kind of weird. We’ve only seen some of them while driving on the beach this afternoon (maybe they’ve seen us other times) but the campsite is fenced as well I suppose.

We obviously weren’t keeping up with the tides as when we finished lunch the car park was practically empty, as everyone must have been heading for the beach road. We did the same and drove along the eastern coast to the wreck of the Maheno. It’s a very wide beach which is just as well as people drive all over the place sometimes, overtaking on the left or wherever, or just stopping in the middle for a chat. It was actually strange to see a couple walking along since it feels like a highway (speed limit 80k’s) and they’re kind of taking their life in their hands! Having said that, there’s lots of people fishing at the edges but it doesn’t strike me as somewhere for a stroll.

The ghostly Maheno used to be a passenger cruise ship around the time of WW1 I think, then sank on the way to Japan having been sold for scrap, then in WW2 was used for bombing target practice. It looks pretty cool stuck into the sand, all rusty and still amazingly with some strips of wood on what would have been the deck. After that we dropped into Eli Creek which is another beautiful clear freshwater creek that runs into the sea, which Nick and the boys waded up while I took the boardwalk. Lovely pandanus growing alongside and another guy was trying to catch an eel from the banks.