Fraser Island
After the Glass House Mountains we drove to Hervey Bay further up the coast and stayed for 3 nights. Hervey Bay is close to Fraser Island, which is the largest sand island in the world. For more details see here.  We'd heard a lot about Frazer Island, so dad and us decided to go in a day trip.  Mum stayed back at the camp and sketched, as she had been there before.  Click on the images for an enlargement.

Fraser Island is an hour or so from the mainland on a fairly slick catamaran.   Here's the three of us bright and early in the morning (6.45am) heading off from Hervey Bay.

The catamaran really rocketed along. Here's a shot of us getting a bit windblown with the wake behind us.

There are no roads on the Island to speak off, so we took off on a very bumpy trek on a 4WD bus.  We headed over to the ocean side, and drove along the beach which had an infestation of 4WD vehicles...

Interestingly Fraser Island has an abundance of Fresh water, which is really strange when you consider that it it is not that big, and is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean!  There are many fresh water creeks that flow to the ocean.  Here's one of them - Eli Creek. Note the infestation of 4WDs...
Because the island is entirely sand, all the creeks had white sandy beds, which was really weird, as you normally assume sandy creeks would be salt water.
There is an abundance of rainforest on Fraser Island. We have been on lots of rain forest walks before, but what spooked us about this walk was that the silence.  Because the creek had a sandy bottom, there was no gurgling of water that you would expect of a normal rainforest creek tumbling over rocks.

A ship came to grief on the ocean side of the Island at some stage.  Bad luck for the sailors at the time, but great news for us latter day visitors...
We had a really full and busy day.  Here's us heading back on the catamaran just as the sun sets over Hervey Bay.
 
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