The weather’s cleared-up a lot and, after spending a week in a luxury home, the memory of soggy camping is becoming a mere distant haze… and to top it off we’ve just spent two glorious days bashing through the world’s biggest sand island in a dirty great, modified Land Rover Defender 4×4. After the professional dune bashing to which we were subjected in Abu Dhabi, we were very excited to get behind the wheel ourselves. This isn’t the first time that we’ve driven through sand on this trip, but two days on Fraser Island’s hard, wet sand highway would provide a totally different experience to revving our way at low speed through soft, dry tracks in the desert.

The tourist office had recently warned us that the eastern beach (i.e the highway) was closed due to “treacherous conditions”, although our 4×4 hire company clarified that it was mostly OK except for a bad stretch which would require some fairly skilful off-road driving — so I let Squiffy do that bit! (Which I must say, she covered very expertly, raising the eyebrows of a number of locals who had chosen to avoid the rocks altogether, instead running the gauntlet against the incoming waves — something we were told not to attempt as salt water wrecks cars!)

Elsewhere, the run along the beach was fine — so long as you kept your eyes out for landing aircraft who share the sand stretch of sand, careering locals and overloaded backpacker’s cars, all of whom were travelling faster than us. The day was tinged with tragedy as, just a few kilometres ahead of us, a backpacker car had overturned killing two of of its passengers and seriously injuring a few more. I gather that the story didn’t make big news back home in the UK, but it was splashed all over the Australian press. Our sympathies are with the affected families. Even before we became aware of the accident, we could not believe how overloaded these backpacker vehicles were: 4×4’s have a much higher centre-of-gravity than a regular road car and that’s before you fill it with eleven backpackers and stuff all of their baggage on the roof… Here’s hoping for some improvements in the legislation to reduce both the speed limits and the number of passengers allowed in each car, even if it means costs go up a little.

Particularly impressive along the beach was the Maheno Shipwreck and the Eli Creek. Inland, we spotted our first dingo (wild dog), very nearly got stuck in the mud and spent a morning swimming around the absolutely clear Lake McKenzie, which has to be seen to be believed.

A glorious couple of days on the island with weather to match — more like this, please Australia!

(Big thanks to Ray and Gillian for sponsoring our cabin accommodation for the night.)

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