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Looking down – on Fraser Island,  the largest sand island in the world. It was World Heritage listed  for both its rich cultural and natural heritage in 1992. Pure strain dingos in the wild are still found here on this exceptionally beautiful island. There are over 100 freshwater lakes (both barrage and dune lakes) bordered by rainforest. It is the only place in the world that has rainforest growing on sand at elevations over 200 metres. Taking all these factors along with the knowledge of creeks and beautiful long beaches into account when we saw the plane sitting on the beach there was definitely no decision to be made as to whether or not we would take a trip.

Some interesting facts about Fraser Island

It has continually recorded climatic and sea level changes for the last 700,000 years and these changes can be seen in the massive sand deposits.

It has wallum heaths of ecological significance (and great flowers in spring and summer)

Over 350 bird species are found on the island.

The sand continues to infiltrate the island moving westward at 8 kilometres per year. Some of the grains of sand come from as far away as Antarctica.

Eliza Fraser was shipwrecked on the island and it was named after her.

The indigenous K’gari aborigines inhabited the land and did not suffer well with the advent of the Europeans.

The Ely river is great fun body surfing from upstream back to the beach. I highly recommend this.

The highest sand dunes on the island are up to 240 metres above sea level. 4o perched dune lakes (1/2 the number in the world) are found on the island.

On our return we wandered through the rainforest looking up at the huge satinay trees growing in the sand and then later looked up again to see the plane as it came in to land.

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