After our surfing we left The Town of 1770 and headed for Harvey Bay which is the main jumping off spot for Frazer Island – another big hit on the east coast aussie list.

Most people camp on Frazer Island for 2 nights/3 days or something like that but we had a blow out with the Whitsundays trip so we had to limit ourselves to a day trip.. Frazer Island is amazing, rainforest in some places…….

….

………then massive expanses of woodlands with beautiful ferns and deep-grooved trees……..

…….and then huge highways of beaches. 

We started our tour with a visit to Central Station which is where all the industries and the school were before the island was given World Heritage Site status. We were warned about spikey pine cones that could fall from the tall trees overhead, the cones are hard, have sharp spikes, grow to the size of footballs and weigh 3kg – so I reckon if you’re hit with one, you’re a gonner!

We headed out on the sandy highway (aka 75 mile beach), which is actually the main motorway and landing strip on Frazer Island. The rest of the island is accessed by uneven sandy tracks which have to be levelled every other day and you need a 4wd to navigate them. Anyway, I digress, we hit the highway and saw The Maheno Wreck which is pretty impressive…..

…. and then on to the Pinnacles, you can see all the different coloured sands and it’s just so striking and like a different world to the rainforest and thick forests only a couple of kilometres away inland.

We had a paddle in Eli Creek which has an amazing sand bed, swirls of white and black sand. The water comes straight from the rainforest and is just gorgeous.

After a spot of lunch we drove our huge 4wd bus over the sandy tracks (a rocky ride, reminded me of several bus journeys in Asia 🙂 ) to Lake McKensie, although it does look like the beach and has that incredible white sand, it is actually a rainwater lake on Frazer Island. The water was just perfect and we chilled out and soaked it all in.

We had a good day but we didn’t get to spend much time in each place. My guidebook said that the company we booked with ran small tours so you moved around quickly to get in as much as possible in throughout the day. There was about 40 people(!) on the bus which was a pain, because you’re always waiting for someone. I definitely would have liked to have seen more of Frazer but hey, them’s the breaks, right? 🙂

Back in Harvey Bay we decided to hit the tiles…….

…….which we don’t actually get to do a lot of due to all the driving. We had a good old night out. It’s just dawned on me, if you’ve been checking out my photos, you’ll probably notice that we almost always go out on the town in shorts – I would NEVER wear shorts at home. Further realisation……. I’m wearing “short-shorts” (like the song……) OH NO!!!!!!!! Work people will know what I’m talking about 😀 

The following day we drove over to Rainbow Beach and lay on the beach to banish the demons. Rainbow Beach, as the name suggests, has the same multi-coloured sand…….

…..and it’s such a nice backdrop for chilling out (and recovering!) for a few hours before hitting the road again. The time is just flying now and Sydney is literally around the corner. It doesn’t feel Christmassy here at all, YES because it’s sunny, it’s just too weird. We even bought a Christmas CD for the car to try and get us in the festive spirit but it’s not really working. Maybe when we hit the bigger spots like Brisbane and Sydney but before that we off to……..Noosa and the Sunshine Coast.

 

More photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157611321600976/ and  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157611321516060/