Fraser Island Trip

What an awesome trip.

Now that I'm back in the comfort of my own home with decent internet, I can reflect on my trip.

I drove from Sydney to Brisbane in one day. It was pretty easy, the iO was running well at 110km/h where it was legal to do so, and was getting just under 10l/100km on premium unleaded with my 29" mud tyres at 40psi.

My oil level was a little bit low, so I added about a litre of oil to bring it up towards the top of the dipstick indicator. I hadn't checked the oil for a few weeks before this, but after a week of driving, the level had barely changed since topping it up.

We caught the barge from river heads to kingfisher bay at lunchtime on tuesday the 27th. This gave us enough time to check into our room at KB resort, let some air out of the tyres and drive to Lake Mackenzie, Central Station and Pile valley and return back before dark. It was a bit windy and overcast, so we wanted to come back and see the blue lake in better conditions later (which we did). We saw our first dingo in the carpark here.

My initial worries with regards to the iO were the clearance and the mud tyres digging in. I had visions of the bash plate/crossbeam scrubbing constantly on the inland tracks where the wheel ruts can get quite deep, but I honestly did not hear it scrub at all, aside from the odd hole in the track where the suspension would take a hit. The tyres were awesome. I think they even helped me gain a bit of momentum when taking off in boggy sand, and were always quick to start 'planing' on top of the soft stuff.

I was cruising on the inland tracks at 30km/h if not a little more, 14psi in my tyres, no load in the back (back seats removed) and 2 of us in the front. I had it locked in 4LLC the entire time on sand, and this worked great. 1st gear  was good for getting moving in even the softest sand, with virtually no use of the clutch. 2nd gear was a good all round gear for the softer and rougher stuff. There were some sections where the track got pretty rough from bouncing off the first obstacle and people's accelerating or braking creating corrugations on a car-length scale. These seemed to go on for ages at times, but 2nd gear was fine for these. On the smoother inland tracks, 3rd gear had perfect torque to keep the car moving efficiently, while on the beach I stuck to around 50km/h in 5th. I hit a few sand washouts unexpectedly, and I'm pretty sure I got completely airborne off one at this speed, so I can't imagine doing 80km/h. Its no wonder the hire vehicles are heavily restricted now, cos it would have been fun if it wasn't my baby ;)

Day 2 we went to the beach via lake wabby lookout and stonetool sandblow lookout. Incredible. After waiting for the tide to drop, we made our way up the beach to the wreck of the Maheno and the coloured sands of The Pinnacles. I really wanted to drive up to Lake Allom on the northern forest loop (Woralie road), but maps and signs had warnings about very soft and rough conditions, and not to do it alone without a completely self sufficient recovery set up. We came back down the beach and swam at Eli Creek, which just looks like a man made pool at Wet and Wild or something. It was very relaxing to float down the creek. We saw some Jungle Perch amongst the tree roots at the side of the creek too.

We then took Happy Valley Road to the Lake Garawongera loop road. There were also warnings about this road, but more people seemed to be doing it, so I was more confident of someone passing by to help if needed. The track was the most difficult we saw, with a few big washouts/step ups over tree roots to contend with, but we had absolutely no problems, and left wondering what bigger challenges we could tackle. This track had the most wildlife with lots of goannas or Lace Monitors and a wide variety of birds incluing the Australian King Parrot.  After another short trip down the beach, we drove back to the western side to watch the sun set at the resort.

Day 3 we drove straight to the eastern beach and south to Hammerstone Sandblow walking trail. We walked through the bush and then out on the sandblow to get to Lake Wabby, where we saw some large Blue Catfish and schools of Rainbowfish. We then drove to Eurong, before continuing to Dilli Village. From here we came inland to do the Southern Lakes drive winding our way north back to the resort. The terrain down here was so different. Large expanses of low lying wetlands and wallum scrub. The lake levels were all very high thanks to the rain that fell last summer, and it is well noted that the perched dune lakes have no inlets or outlets, and are completely dependent on rainfall and evaporation. The most spectacular had to be Lake Birrabeen, the green lake. It was probably better than lake Mackenzie, especially considering that we were the only ones there at the time. There were dingo paw prints everywhere, but we didn't actually see any (which my girlfriend Megan was very happy about seeing as we were all alone). We drove back through the tall forests of Pile valley to the resort once again.

After a full buffet breakfast on our last day, we went to Central Station and did a 4.5km rainforest walk to work it off. Wanggoolba creek is incredibly beautiful, and we saw lots of kookaburras and lace monitors along this trail. As it was a beautiful day, we came back via Lake Mackenzie one more time, which was a lot nicer in the sunlight. We swam here and saw purple spotted gudgeons in the shallows. There was a lot of smoke haze from back burning, which didn't really bother us, but as it turned out a couple days later the embers from this burn flared up and nearly burnt down Kingfisher Bay resort! It was here that we saw 2 more dingoes, who seemed happy to laze about and lap up the attention without harming anyone. From Lake Mackenzie we went straight to the west coast to see Mackenzie's Jetty, where boats used to load timber from plantations at Pile Valley and Central Station. The road was formerly a tram track for getting the logs to the jetty.  On the beach are the remains of an old boiler and tractor from the old logging operations. Logging ceased on the island in 1992, at which time the west coast just north of here was rehabilitated and Kingfisher Bay Ecotourism Resort was built. This coincided with the island's World Heritage listing.

All in all it was a very fun and fascinating trip, and I recommend it to everyone.

The iO was possibly the perfect vehicle for the job. After watching a brand new discovery get buried to its axles at one of the beach entrances (and extract itself with Maxtrax), I had to give the soft sand a go. To my disappointment, the io drove straight over it in 2nd gear low with absolutly no hesitation. It wasn't until I reversed down a water runaway to let some others pass that I finally managed to get stuck. I knew it was likely to happen, but I needed to recover myself at least once! I had looked at maxtrax before the trip, but opted for some home made ones which I made from Plywood and an old car tyre strip door mat. With a couple of goes using this, I was straight out of my bog. I think I wouldn't have been stuck at all with a locker...

I'll get to work on a video of some bits soon, but for now, here are some photos...

First taste of driving on the inland tracks - Piece of cake.

The Maheno wreck

The tracks around Lake Garawongera.

There were a couple of smaller 4wds than mine on the island.

Wanggoolba Creek, Central Station.

Fraser island DONE!

$4 for 6 minutes of high pressure water.

Reinflation before heading home

Glad we made it onto the 5pm barge back home - a lot of others were waiting to get on.

Back in Brisbane, she finally got a real wash :)