Fraser Island

We recently did a trip to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. We camped in Hervey Bay and then stayed in a cabin over on Fraser Island. We have got a very big 17ft camper trailer, there are 6 of us and it is cheap accommodation. Having 4 young children who are impatient and unable to help a lot isn’t terribly good when you have to erect this thing. Not to mention the fact that I am practially 5 foot nothing and can’t reach anything to help. So the task of putting the tent together largely falls to my husband. He is a very good boy scout and is pretty good at putting it up, it is probably more safe and sound than anything else in the park. We have camped in it during gailforce winds and whilst everything else fell down around us, we were still standing.

The camping ground is right next to Wetside in Hervey Bay. Wetside is great for kids, they loved it. There is water slides there and a big bucket that dumps water, they also have a toddlers area, they have a kiosk and cafe as part of the park and it is situated right on the beach at Pialba. Hervey Bay of course is the whale watching capital of Australia but we didn’t go whale watching this time, we were going to Fraser for 3 days so we couldn’t afford it this time but we figure it will give us an excuse to go back again.

We actually did see some whales on the barge going over to Fraser, they weren’t up very close and we couldn’t see much but that was our whale watching experience!

Over on Fraser we mainly stuck to the Eastern side of the island, along 90 mile beach which is the main tourist side of the island.  We stayed at the Cathedral Beach Camping Ground, this was a bit of a culture shock but these experiences are good for all of us!  The camping ground is the only private camping ground on the island but is quite primitive with it’s facilities.  The cabin that we stayed in was small, extremely small for 6 people and had no bathroom or toliet of its own so we had to use the park amenities. There was no tv, no phone and no internet access which we were shocked about at first but by days end we were all so tired that we hardly missed it and it gave us an excuse to be in bed early.  We definitely decided that next time we go back we will stay at Eurong, Cathedral Beach is quite a drive up the beach and for the money that it cost us to stay there we could have stayed at Eurong.

Of course being on Fraser Island we visited all of the most popular tourist destinations such as Lake Mackenzie, Central Station, the Maheno wreck and the Champagne Pools.  The kids had a ball and were thoroughly exhausted after the 3 days over there, all of the sun, swimming and driving wore us all out.

Central Station…..

Our first destination when we arrived on Fraser, (after towing a broken down car off the barge!) was Central Station, we wandered along the boardwalk through the massive old trees, I told the kids to play a game who could find the most interesting thing, that soon got out of control with the most interesting things becoming things like leaves and bits of tree. I found some of the most interesting things to be the huge size of some of the trees, wondering how many hundreds of years some of them had been there. Not only the massive height of the trees but the width of the trunks were just huge! I found the moss and fungi growing on some of them created interesting patterns. The most beautiful thing to me was the sun rays beaming through the trees.

Lake Mackenzie…..

When visiting Fraser Island there are a few key spots that are not to be missed, the beautiful pristine waters of Lake Mackenzie is just one of them. While hubby and the kids swam I went for a wander around the lake (well not all of it!) but I walked over a small boardwalk and up a bit of a hill and found myself on a beautiful deserted stretch of the beach, a far cry from the other side which is always packed with people. Lake Mackenzie is beautiful with it’s white sandy beach and the clear blue water, it is probably the most photographed part of Fraser Island. I made my photographic challenge for Lake Mackenzie getting a shot that looked like some I’ve seen on postcards. I think I did alright, the blues are pretty blue which is my favourite colour. I have always had a love for bright colours and I think that is obvious in my photos, if there is a way that I can intensify a colour or put extra colours into a picture I will.

The Maheno Wreck…..

The rusty old wreck of the Maheno is probably the second most photographed part of Fraser Island, I know that if you ever read an article about Fraser you will always see a picture of Lake Mackenzie and the Maheno Wreck. So I know that there probably isn’t an angle that hasn’t yet been photographed but when I was taking my pictures I liked to think that I was capturing something that hadn’t yet been captured but I think that what I was really trying to capture was my feelings for this rusted old boat. I wanted to capture it at a more abstract angle, I particularly like abstract art so that’s really what I was looking for here. I re-visited the Maheno a few times over the time that we were there, I got it a low tide and high tide and also took the family there to get some photos with them in it. I loved the high tide photos because of the waves breaking over the ship and pouring through the portholes.  Driving along the beach when the Maheno just comes into sight in the distance, there is something ominous about it and getting up close and walking around it gave me an eerie sort of feeling.

You can really see the big difference between these two photos, one taken at low tide on a fun sunny day and the other was taken at high tide on a overcast day.  While I like the lowtide photo, I like the mood that the hightide one creates particularly on a grey day.  It suits the mood of the photo.  They are two totally different photos of exactly the same thing!

All in all, we all really loved the time that we spent on Fraser, we were only there for 3 days but we packed quite a lot into our time there.  We really enjoyed it but travelling with children can be exhausting and they also get very tired.  By the time we were leaving I think that they were ready to go home.  We will definintely return to Fraser Island one day to do the other side of the island and maybe spend a bit longer there.  It is a really beautiful place and I am sure that we only managed to scratch the surface of what it has to offer!