Al and I were slightly apprehensive as we had booked onto a 4x4 self-drive tour with eight complete strangers. What would they be like? Would we have boy racers who would crash the car? Maybe a group of nine people who all knew each other or who spoke the same foreign language? A group of vegetarians?! We discussed these thoughts over and over as we waited for the day of the tour briefing to approach. We had booked with Koalas, a group who have a number of backpacker hostels in Queensland and who were recommended to us by 'Wicked' travel agency. Our 4x4 tour included two free nights accommodation at Koalas in Hervey Bay (the starting point for the tour), we were pretty pleased about this until we realised that Koalas is a pretty dingy, dirty place and you have to pay extra for bedsheets, so after our two free nights we hot-footed it next door to A1 Fraser Roving – an awesome backpackers which is cleaner, friendlier and cheaper than Koalas.
Anyway on Christmas day we attended the briefing at the hostel and met our new travelling companions of the next three days – two Kiwis, two French, one other English, one Columbian, one Irish and one German. The three people who stepped up for driving the monster trucks through the sandy island were Clary (Kiwi guy), Al and... me! Our first of two briefings comprised of a quick chat explaining the basics of the itinerary and a video on the history of Fraser Island, conservation of the sand dunes and lakes, how deep to bury your poo if you're camping and how to avoid a dingo eating your baby. We chatted to our new friends, briefly discussed some food shopping, but decided that as it was Christmas day we would leave buying the food until the following morning.
The next morning at 6.30am we met at the Koala garage. Col, the slightly unhinged depot boss introduced himself to us: “Now i've got two daughters – one a thems the World kick-boxing champion, the other's a gold medal boxing champion, they're in their 30s – and they know that if I'm talking they don't dare interrupt me or they know I get ANGRY... I come from the outback and I'm old-fashioned and if yous speak over me I'll feed ya to the crocs – Hahaha!” Crikeys! A little alarmed by this prospect we set to work checking the itinerary, checking the tents for damage, counting our cutlery and loading up the car. Two girls and a boy were sent off to buy the food and came back with sausages, mince, pasta... and about three large bags of salad items and 10 litres of milk (not the most practical for a three day camping trip, but at least very healthy!). Col took us inside for a DVD on how to drive on the island – he was very insistent that if we so much as looked at the clutch it would burn out and we would lose our bond, if we got ANY salt water on the vehicle we would lose our bond, if we drove on the main roads to the ferry in 4x4 we would lose our bond, if we were caught driving after dark we would lose our bond, if we returned the car late because we went to McDonald's on the way home we would... yes you guessed it... lose our bond. Col's menacing laughter echoed in our ears and at this stage we all felt pretty sure that we would indeed lose our bond.
Eventually we piled into our Toyota Land Cruiser, Clarry at the wheel and headed to the ferry to cross to Fraser. Everything went without a hitch and we enjoyed the ferry trip. Once we reached the island we put the car into 4x4 drive and off we went! We made it a few hundred metres up the road before being stuck in our first Fraser traffic jam.
This occurs when someone gets stuck in the sand, no one can overtake and everyone generally jumps out to help with the digging and pushing. After they managed to rescue their car the line started up again and everyone moved on as before. Then it was our turn. We stopped in the middle of a soft-sand road, the sand got quite deep in places, around a foot or so, and if you stop in it it gathers round your wheels and then you have problems. What ensued was an hour or so of revving our engine, reversing and attempting to go ahead again. We were helped by quite a few big Aussie guys from the cars behind us (who were just as keen for us to move on!) and we pushed and pushed up the hills of sand. 
Then we decided to do what we had done at the beginning. We lowered the tyre pressure to 20... and hey presto! We were zipping along over the sand dunes like the best of them! 
Our first stop was at Lake Biraboon, a really beautiful lake and our favourite of the trip. Absolutely stunning.
The white sand beach was uncrowded and the water was cool and clear. We walked out into the shallow water, fresh water not salt, and swam around in the sunshine, diving down every now and then to take a gulp – completely fresh and tasted amazing. It was like paradise and I really think swimming in fresh water is better than salt water.
The next lake we stopped at was a little less inviting. Lake Boomanjin is brown/red coloured from leaf decay and although Col had tried to persuade us that it is very inviting and very healthy to swim in, we didn't really fancy it.
Onwards we drove, Al behind the wheel this time. We were a little concerned after our delay that we wouldn't get to the campsite in time. However, with our newly deflated tyres and Al's confident driving we had no problems and we began to find ourselves getting out to help other cars that were stuck.
We hit the beach... wooo!
It was stunning, over 100 kms long and white sand all the way. Unfortunately we were told not to swim in the sea as Fraser Island is home to a host of tiger sharks... I didn't need to be told twice, but we did see other people dipping their toes in and they seemed to survive.
We saw our first (and only) dingo of the trip... and yes, I spotted it.
He was just running around on the beach, walking up to the cars to have a sniff. He was very skinny and looked a bit wild, bit of a recluse from the pack I think.
We sadly didn't see any more, but we could hear them around the campsite at night and rummaging around in the morning.We found the campsite, just off the beach, and found a place to park and set up camp. Barbequed sausages were on the menu and these were accompanied by bread and salad... definite crowd-pleasers.
As we were all quite tired we went to bed pretty early, no sitting round the camp fire playing the guitar for us... but we had a long day ahead of us. But Al did manage to get up early enough to take this pic of the sunrise:
We were up early, after a pretty uncomfortable night's sleep all round. Koala hadn't provided us with ground sheets and Al and I had been too tight to hire sleeping bags so it was a very uncomfortable night on the lumpy, hard sand.
After breakfast we jumped into the car and headed off to the nearby Lake Wabby. According to Col this lake will not be around in a couple of years as the sand dunes surrounding the lake are slowly filling it up, so it was quite high on the 'must see' list. After a hair raising drive down some very dodgy sand roads we parked the car and walked down a steep hill through the rainforest
until we hit the sand dunes that make this lake famous.
Al had a few issues with his flip flops which both decided to break during the trip, he managed to tie them into place with some of the local plantlife:
We ran down the dunes and splashed straight into the water. The lake is the deepest on the island and a dark green colour. It is surrounded by sand on one side and forest on the other. Really beautiful. We were also the first to arrive and beat the crowds.
After this it was my turn to drive (!)
I took the wheel and got us back up the nightmare road. It was tough, especially driving fast over the soft sand in case we became stuck, but I managed. However just before we reached the beach we came across a traffic jam, two cars ahead of us, two behind us and five or six cars trying to get through from the other direction – all on a one lane, soft sand road. We had to mount the side of the road... very tricky in our top-heavy car (everyone was leaning to one side incase we tipped over) and wait for several cars to come through. We were then able to get through and get to the beach before anymore cars came.
Along the beach we sped and all the way to Indian Head, the peninsula at the top of the island. We climbed up to the top of the lookout and looked over the beaches below and into the sea. 
It was really amazing and we even spotted a hammer head shark in the waters below (really glad I decided not to swim!).
It was great. We wanted to drive further but we were told that if we attempted this we would lose our bond :-( we thought about it... the road ahead was extremely soft sand but we could have made it... but then some cocky Aussie dude came over and started giving us some cheek “what were you told at your briefing?... weren't you told you couldn't drive up there... everyone knows Koala vans can't drive up there...” Grrrr... with growing protests in the back of the car from the French girls we turned around and headed back south. We stopped at the shipwreck to take a look.
And then we headed to Ely Creek. It's a freshwater creek which runs onto the beach. It has been developed and seemed to be a favourite with the children. Most of the visitors to the island gather here in groups, sitting in deck chairs in the water and drinking beer.
We wondered why people gather here and not at the beautiful lakes and asked a local why – apparently drinking and eating is banned at the lakes so this is the only real place they can come.It was late and we headed back to the campsite to cook up some burgers and pasta. Michelle, the slightly crazy Irish girl in our group, ran over to a group of Aussie guys and asked them to put their music up, instead they drove their car over to us, opened the doors and put the sound system on full blast – party time!
People from camps all around came to join in and we partied until the wee hours – that is until 10.30... it seems a lot later when you are camping for some reason... anyway it was good fun.
The next morning, with Al nursing a hangover, we headed over to the famous Lake MacKenzie. The weather wasn't as great as it had been the previous days but the lake was still very nice.
We decided that Lake Birraboon had been more beautiful, probably because it was far less crowded.
It was soon time to head back to the ferry and return the car. We got our bond back – yey! And promised to stay in touch with each other on facebook. We ended the evening with some cheap food, some possum spotting:
and Al and I headed for our last night bus journey to Brisbane, another bad night's sleep for us!Fraser Island was my favourite experience in Australia. We were lucky to have such a great group,
the car driving was good fun, and the lakes and scenery was out of this world. It's a great place to come with your own 4x4, with a group of friends maybe, and we definitely want to return.
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