"Fraser Island - paradise on earth" Fraser Island by vatschi

When i booked my trip to Fraser Island I had no idea I was going to discover one of the little paradises on earth. Although I was told by many other backpackers that their time spent there was an amazing experience and adventure I still didn't know what to expect of the island situated off the southern Queensland coast.
Since 1992 it has been protected as a World Heritage listing, being a unique, wonderful, amazing, stunning, beautiful, breath-taking island.
With a size of 165,280 hectares it is the biggest sand island on earth. and on these hectares you find so many different landscapes you only believe it when you're there to see it with your eyes. I still find the fact fascinating, that everything there's growing out of the sand! you find beautiful rainforests, freshwater lakes, huge sandblows, km of beautiful beaches and lots of wild animals.

It was a saturday when I arrived after an 11 hours bus ride from Airlie Beach at Harvey Bay, where the adventure should start. By bus i got to the Escape hostel where in the afternoon 27 people would meet, that were going to Fraser the next day.
As it was a self-driving adventure they tried to prepare us for the island and first showed some pictures and then told us all the things we were not supposed to do over there (providing great examples like "two weeks ago we had a group that did this and got fined...", "once there was such a horrible accident that a girl landed in a wheelchair", "years ago there happened this horrible carcrash", "once there was a little child eaten by a dingo" etc...) So we learned to know about ways we could break our necks -> for example by not driving carefully through dangerous places on the beach like the so called "Fraser island ***", we heard of the tides, dingoes and other wild animals... They also spoke about all the thousand ways you could get fined by the rangers. After an hour I was sitting there and not so sure about that trip anymore, that now seemed rather dangerous and very expensive, considering all the fines you could get so easily ;-)
Although a bit shocked we were still all excited and then got split up into 3 groups to discuss the food we were going to need..... the evening we spent cooking and talking, all excited about the next day, when the adventure should start.

Not too early in the morning we left with 3 Toyotas to the "barge" that took us to fraser. The barge was full of other 4WD vehicles filled up with backpackers. seeing all these people I already expected a crowded island. but as it is so big you usually meet the people driving on the beach and when you go to see the major sights on the island.
How great it was to arrive on the island and drive through the sand. we got to walk a little bit and take a swim in one of the many lakes on the island.
By the time we got to the most famous spot on the island, LAKE MC'KENZIE, it was raining down like crazy...still Ali and me were so curious that we went down to the lake when we thought the weather was getting better. well, we were mistaken, down by the lake it started to rain down on us again and within a few seconds our clothes were wet. I was already worried the weather could stay like this for the 3 days on the island and we would have to camp in rain. hooo, it wasn't a funny moment, it was cold as hell!

Luckily the sky cleared up and we got to the wonderful beaches and set our tents (just a few meters from the beach, you could hear the waves!) quite early as it got dark around 6pm. we then cooked and had dinner and later on went over to one of the other groups, that both had a fire. drinking wine, roasting marshmellows, chatting, singing and just enjoying our time we spent our first evnening on the island.

The next day we spent driving on the beach and getting from one "sight" to the next one. it was just amazing and we had so much fun. we got to swim in the champagne pools and went to Indian Head. We then set our tents somewhere north of Rainbow gorge, on the beach again. a windy but still nice spot =) and i enjoyed the ocean and the sunset on the next day.

On our last day on the island we went to rainbow gorge, which was great again. one of the must see's on the island i think.... and then we got to lake mckenzie, this time in plain sunshine. This lake is just incredible. its water is so clear and the lake is just beautiful. swimming in there makes you happy, i would have loved to stay there... but we had to get back to the barge, that took us away from paradise again.... =(

So if you ever go to Australia, make sure you visit Fraser Island.

• In a nutshell:paradise