4WD Adventure on Fraser Island

Sooooooo excited. Fraser Island today and an early morning start as we have a 6.30am briefing in time to catch the ferry across to Kingfisher Bay.

We have hired a 4WD from a company called Fraser Dingo on a two day adventure. We have a vivid blue Toyota Prado (automatic) named “Bill” and included in the tour are our ferry transfers and Fraser Island camping permits. This will be perfect practice for our month long 4WD tour of the Kimberley’s in May/June.

We loaded up our camping gear and supplies and after a full briefing, itinerary, tide times, speed limits, how to engage 4WD and what to do when bogged in sand, we set off a few km to River Head for the 8.30am ferry.

The ferry takes about an hour. Once we reached Kingfisher Bay, Jen got quite excited and wanted to be the first to test our skills on the sand tracks. We set to 4WD and attacked the 30km/hr sand sliding and bumping along the way. Our journey starts on a tricky narrow two way section. Suddenly the tour buses are coming hurtling behind us and we have to give way to them. Jen quickly diverts over and into one of the many elevated sandy give way lanes and successfully negotiated a big tree root to safety. What an induction into 4 wheel driving but Jen is loving it... no fear!!!!

World Heritage listed Fraser Island is the world’s largest sand Island and stretches 123 km. It is home the only place on the planet where rainforests grows in sand.

The island has rainforests, tall eucalyptus woodland, mangrove forests, wallum and peat swamps, sand dunes and coastal heaths. It is made up of sand that has been accumulating for approximately 750,000 years on volcanic bedrock.

As we have two full days, our day one itinerary takes us first to to the pristine Lake Mckenzie then to Eurong on the east coast to drive the beach at 2.00pm low tide, onto Mehanni Ship wreck, The Pinnacles and Eli Creek. (See separate footprint for places we visited).

My turn to drive. The beach is a highway and we can drive up to 80km/hr with a couple of rocky sections to navigate and creek crossings. At one point we found ourselves chasing a plane as it came in to land as the beach doubles as a runway.

After exploring Mehino Ship wreck, we visited the fresh water Eli creek and floated down to shore.

With higher tides approaching, we head down the beach a little to Eli Creek campground to set up our tent, hammock and cooking stove and settle in for a peaceful and majestic sunset.Read more