Fraser Island

From the very beginning of our time here, we’ve been given one piece of advice over and over again: “go to Fraser Island”. In fact, we were initially told about Fraser by a group of backpackers during the first few days of our trip in Fiji! It has been on our list of things to do for a long time and we were finally able to get up there this weekend. I say finally because the whole undertaking involved a lot frustration in planning. We changed our reservations three different times due to changes in transportation issues. We even considered bagging the whole thing at one point. Thankfully that didn’t happen and I can say with confidence that all of the madness involved in planning this weekend was well worth it! Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world (Fraser Island). There is just one resort on the island and you must travel by boat/barge to get there. There are no paved roads so it’s only accessible by four-wheel drive vehicles. Our pastor Tim & his wife Donna let us use their 4x4 (incredible, I know!) and we thankfully brought it back to them in one piece:). Their vehicle is a Holden Jackaroo, a true Aussie-made vehicle, which only added to the experience. I feel like a broken record here saying “there’s just no way to explain how beautiful…” over and over again, but Fraser is definitely one of these places. It is seriously hard to put it into words. As we bumped along the sandy roads in the Jackaroo, I couldn’t help but feel like I was on some sort of exploration safari, on a mission through the jungles to bring some medical supplies to a never-before-heard of tribe:). Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that remote, but it felt like it to me. This was as close as we got to capturing a picture of a dingo (a wild dog). The dingos of Fraser Island are actually quite scary. We know a girl here who was attacked by a pack of them on Fraser as a child and was seriously injured. There are signs everywhere on the island about staying far away from them and keeping an extra close eye out on small children. We saw this little guy from the security of our car. Not too scary looking, is he? (it's a bit blurry, sorry!)

The coolest features of the island, in my opinion, were the crystal-clear lakes. Since there is no soil on the island (except for the kind produced by the decomposition of trees/plants), the rivers & lakes look almost fake. Most of the ones we saw were really deep and I overcame my fears of deep, dark water and actually swam across two of them:). It was probably the assurance of shark-free waters that helped make up my mind about swimming! Another bonus was that we got to take in a few sunsets! Living on the east coast of Australia, we get sunrises but not sets. It was wonderful to get to experience a sunset on the ocean again. Here are a few pics we took that night (of the nearly fifty pictures - we had a tripod and got a little bit carried away!)...