#fraser island

[travelmanposts]

Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia: K'gari also known by its former name Fraser Island, is a World Heritage-listed sand island along the south-eastern coast in the Wide Bay–Burnett region of Queensland, Australia. The island lies approximately 250 km north of the state capital, Brisbane, and is within the Fraser Coast Region local council area. The world heritage listing includes the island, its surrounding waters and parts of the nearby mainland which make up the Great Sandy National Park. In the 2021 census, the island had a population of 152 people.Up to 500,000 people visit the island each year. Wikipedia

[redrcs]

Well hello.

Humpback whale calf, spy hopping.

Platypus Bay, K'gari (Fraser Island)

On my travels

[general-jazz]

Lake Mackenzie, Fraser Island 🇦🇺

[hasellia]

Coffee Rock at Ngala Rocks, K'gari

[charlesandmartine]

Saturday 21st December 2024

Fraser Island/ K'gari

The alarm clock agitated at 6.15 and we were instantly awake for today's adventure. We had to present ourselves at the tourist information place in Urangan to be herded by bus to River Heads port to catch the early morning ferry to K'gari, the K being silent, leaving gari pronounced Gaary. (Fraser Island is a lot easier to articulate) Due to little research on my part, I was surprised at how large an island this was. In length, it is 123 km, 15 km wide, 22 km at its widest part; 1840 square kilometers in all. We were informed it was different from any island we are likely to have visited before because K'gari is made entirely of sand. Because of this, we were half expecting to pull alongside a giant sandcastle with a couple of paper flags at each end! Our tour guide put us right on this fallacy. I prefer, he said, to think of K'gari as a sand bank, not an island. If you imagine the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower, K'gari would merely have been a great big pile of sand attached to the rest of Australia, and the continental shelf would also be visible. The notion of how the sand was built up in the first place was put forward. It all began a long way away to the south of us here, in the Blue Mountains, to the west of Sydney. The wind blew, eroding and separating tiny particles of sand, depositing them into creeks, carried by rivers into the Pacific, where the longshore drift carried these sand particles north of Brisbane, forming this chain of islands. Today, K'gari is seen as the largest sand island in the world.

Now, some important advice from information gleaned from our last excursion experience that included a paid for lunch. 4 rules that you break at your peril and put you at risk of going hungry. 1. Assess the competition and position yourself at the front of the queue. There will be plenty of food. 2. Carry out a size assessment of the fellow eaters. Be sure to be in front of the people who appear to be the most familiar with large portions of food. Ergo, there will be more food available. 3. Take high value items; New Zealand green mussels, fish fillet (any sort), large lumps of chicken. (forget the legs), 4. Follow these rules, and you will be well placed for seconds.

Our tour firstly took us to McKensie Lake, which was indeed a curiosity because it was one of three lakes sat in pure sand! Afterall, sand doesn't usually hold water! This was an opportunity to lay on the sand by the lake before setting off for a boardwalk through rainforest. Between the years 1886 and 1991, loggers worked these forests on the island for their timbers: Hoop Pine, Kauri Pine, Turpentine, Blood Wood were some. This was big business, shipping timbers across to the mainland and processing them in Maryborough, yes of Mary Poppins fame. One large logging company was Mckensie and Sons, which dominated operations, even building railways to move these huge logs across difficult terrain. Then, in 1991, the federal government put a stop to the whole thing. They wanted UNESCO status as a world heritage site, and the price for this was to stop the logging. In 1992, UNESCO agreed and K'gari was granted what it wanted.

The east side of the island remarkably has approximately 80 km of flat tidal beach that our bus could drive along! Today, we probably covered 20 km of it, but often at speed. Our destination was the wreck of the SS Maheno, a steam packet that used to ply these waters and across to New Zealand in the early 20th century. 1935 came, and it was no longer cost-effective to run a steam ship, and our vessel was sold for scrap to a Japanese company who came and collected her. Deciding to tow her to the scrap yard rather than sail under power, both ships got into difficulties in a cyclone, resulting in the Maheno drifting and running ashore in the sand, where her hulk remains to this day. Now, a protected shipwreck, she will always be there rusting away. Great photography, though. We made our way back along the sands passing Coffee Rocks; ancient deposits of tree formations which break down leaving a coffeestain in the water, seeing the coloured sand cliffs and then to Eli Creek, a bit of a magnet for kids to play in the fresh waters flowing into the sea. Also, a magnet to the local population of dingoes keenly looking for a crafty meal either left by humans or foraged.

Then, it was back to the ferry and setting sail for Urangan and home. Fully fed, but weighing up whether a fish and chip supper might be required as a top-up. Another great day, tomorrow promises to be somewhat quieter.

We don't really like organised trips; being organised, conforming to a demanding itinerary, shuffling along with a whole load of other people, not being able to spend time on the parts that interest us, and not being able to skip or move on from areas that do not. It was a very long day, but we went places and saw things that we would not otherwise have had access to by our own resources. Therefore, it was well worth it, and the advice given was correct. This island, although by topography, was not remarkable, it was instead quite amazing and unique.

ps. We did stop off in Hervey Bay to get snapper and chips, but it was the third fish and chip we had tried before finding one that was open on a Saturday night beyond 7pm! What is the matter with these people? The one we did find open managed to stay open till eight! The rest of the Esplanade, the main entertainment area, was in darkness by then!

pps. We passed the Botanical Gardens at about 7pm, and we were somewhat surprised at the crowds queuing to get in. Then we remembered the Christmas lights display. And then we recalled it was nearly Christmas! A fact that to date that had escaped us!

[travelbinge]

By Antoine Beauvillain

Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia

[tenth-sentence]

The landward shore is lined with swamps and forests.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

[janisellebilston]

[caitlinnsblog]

Fraser Island, December 2022🤍💙🌊🐚☀️

[whats-in-a-sentence]

The people of K'gari were known to be kind to shipwrecked mariners, but a few months after the raid they treated the survivors of the wreck of the Thomas King with unusual barbarity. William Henry Walsh put it down to a fresh spirit of revenge among the Butchulla.

Frequent allusions have been made to the extraordinary secresy of the result of that jaunt, and much surprise expressed at the profound silence maintained concerning their exploits, by this most heterogenous body of black hunters. True, now and then we receive little bits of information from Sydney, (of all places in the world), that rumours are afloat that the natives were driven into the sea, end there kept as long as daylight or life lasted.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

[redrcs]

Sequence of play.

Two Humpback whales playing, Platypus Bay, K'gari.

On my travels.

[lezarkyeahyeah]

Fraser Island/ K'gari (Paradise in Butculla aboriginal language), Australia 2023

[general-jazz]

Somewhere on Fraser Island, QLD 🇦🇺

[bradsbackpack]

K’Gari, formally Fraser Island, officially renamed by Australian Government.

K’Gari is the original placename for the largest sand island in the world. After Captain James Fraser and his wife Eliza were shipwrecked on the island in the 1830s, it was renamed Fraser Island. Historians suggest that following Ms. Fraser’s rescue, she shared false accounts and stories about the Butchulla people. This resulted in the subsequent genocide of the First Nations people. To the…