This is the story of my trip with Heidi to Fraser Island on the Australia Day long weekend.
Fraser Island is about a 3+ hour drive north of Brisbane, via Gympie and Rainbow Beach. We cleverly left work early to get to the island on Thursday night and avoid the Friday morning rush. We left at 2:30 which was a bit later than we had hoped and took a little longer than we should have to pick up camping essentials (ice and beer). So we only made it to Inskip Point at 6:30, which was an hour after the last barge was scheduled to leave.
Inskip was absolutely chockers with campers spending the night there to go across to Fraser first thing in the morning. We thought we'd prefer to risk setting up camp in the dark than to wait til Friday morning to battle with the hundreds of others wanting to come across. We decided we might as well double check that the barge had stopped running for the night so we ventured out onto the point. There was another 4WD there trying their luck and miraculously the barge came across and picked us up!
The deck hand told us the boss wanted to go home but he thought maybe we might have some beers for them so they did one last trip. We greased their palms with a beer each (plus the $75 fee) and made it to Fraser with a small amount of light left.
We drove up the beach at a good speed - it was low tide and the beach was like an open highway with no traffic. We found the first designated camping area on the beach at about 7 and headed in via the path through the sand dune to pitch tent before it got dark.
Little did we know that the unusually dry weather on Fraser had turned all the soft sand areas into the dry version of quicksand! We drove down into a slight ditch in the track between the beach and the grassed area behind the dunes. After getting stuck trying to get up the other side of the ditch, we managed (after a lot of digging) to back ourselves up but then couldn't get back out to the beach either! We spent an hour trying to get ourselves out, by which time all light had disappeared...
Thankfully we managed to flag down a passing Land Cruiser using the torch and got a tow out to the beach. In another minor miracle the driver of the Cruiser turned out to be the manager of the private campsite at Dilli Village, a couple of K's back down the beach. He felt sorry for us and told us we could stay there the night for free. So by 9:30 we had the tent up and some dinner cooking on the stove. But that was just the start of the adventure...
Fraser Island is about a 3+ hour drive north of Brisbane, via Gympie and Rainbow Beach. We cleverly left work early to get to the island on Thursday night and avoid the Friday morning rush. We left at 2:30 which was a bit later than we had hoped and took a little longer than we should have to pick up camping essentials (ice and beer). So we only made it to Inskip Point at 6:30, which was an hour after the last barge was scheduled to leave.
Inskip was absolutely chockers with campers spending the night there to go across to Fraser first thing in the morning. We thought we'd prefer to risk setting up camp in the dark than to wait til Friday morning to battle with the hundreds of others wanting to come across. We decided we might as well double check that the barge had stopped running for the night so we ventured out onto the point. There was another 4WD there trying their luck and miraculously the barge came across and picked us up!
The deck hand told us the boss wanted to go home but he thought maybe we might have some beers for them so they did one last trip. We greased their palms with a beer each (plus the $75 fee) and made it to Fraser with a small amount of light left.
We drove up the beach at a good speed - it was low tide and the beach was like an open highway with no traffic. We found the first designated camping area on the beach at about 7 and headed in via the path through the sand dune to pitch tent before it got dark.
Little did we know that the unusually dry weather on Fraser had turned all the soft sand areas into the dry version of quicksand! We drove down into a slight ditch in the track between the beach and the grassed area behind the dunes. After getting stuck trying to get up the other side of the ditch, we managed (after a lot of digging) to back ourselves up but then couldn't get back out to the beach either! We spent an hour trying to get ourselves out, by which time all light had disappeared...Thankfully we managed to flag down a passing Land Cruiser using the torch and got a tow out to the beach. In another minor miracle the driver of the Cruiser turned out to be the manager of the private campsite at Dilli Village, a couple of K's back down the beach. He felt sorry for us and told us we could stay there the night for free. So by 9:30 we had the tent up and some dinner cooking on the stove. But that was just the start of the adventure...
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