Fraser Island Adventure Part 2

Day 4 was my absolute favourite day of hiking on the island.  I passed through Valley of the Giants and truly the name did not disappoint. There isn’t a big enough word for the size of the trees nor photos able to capture them (well, not mine anyway!).  There was a gorgeous hikers camp in Valley of the Giants that I really wish we could have stayed at.  I met my first fellow hiker there while I was stopped for lunch. He was staying put and camping there for the night.  It’s not a fenced campsite and at each of the tables there are strong metal boxes to store your food in overnight rather than keeping it in your tent and risking overnight visitors.

After passing through Valley of the Giants the track opened up to a bright sandy track. Apparently the only other person who’s walked this trail since it last rained was a giant! I was fascinated by the size of the footprints coming towards me!

Walking along the high track towards the end I was on high alert for snakes. According to a friendly ranger I met at Central Station, the most commonly sighted snakes here are death adders, closely followed by eastern browns. You’d be unlucky to come across one at this time of year – they’d be “pretty dopey” if you did see one. Apparently the eastern browns usually get out of your way, but the death adders do not (after all, if your name was Death Adder, why would you??). I wished huge luck on myself and was extra vigilant along the sunny, dry, leafy track. Luckily, I was lucky! I arrived right on time at 3pm to our meeting point and from there we headed back to the beach and up to Dundabara campground via Happy Valley. The guy at Happy Valley was super chatty and gave us lots of great info about heading north. Dundabara is another fenced in huge campground with full facilities – hello shower!

On the drive up the beach we saw our first dingo. It was sitting in the sand not far from where the cars drive. We slowed down and I opened my window to get a photo. Note to self, don’t do that. The dingo jumped up and started running straight towards my open window! A combination of me putting up the window and Jubbie speeding up meant that my face is still in tact! It ran along after our car for quite some time and l think might have interacted with other cars behind us in a similar manner. I think you call that dingo sport. Apparently some tourists have fed it from their car which has encouraged that behaviour. Such a silly (not to mention illegal) thing to do because feeding them often results in aggressive behaviour and their ultimate euthanasia.

Dundabara campground is great. As with the others, the campsites are well spaced out among the trees, with picnic tables at each and lots of room for your car and tent. In the shower block I came across some French tourists washing their hair and having “baths” at the bathroom sinks – they didn’t have coins for the hot showers and apparently cold showers were not appealing! Chef Jublé whipped us up some brown rice noodles and veggies – absolutely delicious as always! And an extra delightful surprise – the washing up water was warm. Given how cold it was, we were almost going to offer to do the washing up for everyone! The sky was crystal clear tonight and it was cold! Unfortunately we were right near a loud generator which drowned out the sound of waves a bit. It was such a relief when it finally stopped!

On day 5, our last full day on the island, we headed up to Sandy Cape, the northern most tip of the island. We’d heard from our friend at Happy Valley that there are a couple of points along the way at Orchid Beach and South Ngkala Rocks that are pretty hairy and apparently 90% of people get bogged! Delighted to say, we were in the 10% and made it there and back unbogged and unscratched. The pass through South Ngkala Rocks was very tight with rocks close on both sides of the car and 4WDer Jubbie did a fantastic job of getting through. We both held our breath that we wouldn’t encounter someone coming the other way! Tough track to be two way. I videoed the return trip which was a little easier given it was downhill.

At the end we rewarded our driver with a beer and some hot chips looking out over the ocean!


Right up north is beautiful with sand dunes very good for whale watching and also a sand bar that goes out for 50km and acts as a break. On one side the water is calm and on the other it’s rough with waves crashing onto the sand bar.

We saw our second dingo along the way. This one was padding happily up the beach past the fishermen checking out whether there were any snacks. No car lunging at, just happy trotting along.

There are these stunning sand formations around Cathedral Rocks which are deep orange and great shapes and textures. It’s truly amazing how diverse this island is.


We made it back to Dundabara well before high tide which was something we had been concerned about. They say not to drive on the beach two hours either side of high tide but there are obviously some areas you can and others that are problematic – we just don’t know which are which. I waited on the phone for over an hour to book our return trip on the barge tomorrow. By that stage it was too late for us to go anywhere else, so we decided to stay another night. It’s a great campground – fantastic facilities, great camp sites. This time we selected a spot on the other side of the campground to hopefully reduce the sound of the generator. There were a lot more noisy campers here tonight – I think it’s all the noisy French people we heard in Central a couple of nights ago.


Chef Jublé cooked up a delicious veggie, black bean and chickpea spicy soup while it was still light and before eating we took a walk along the beach until dusk. There were lots of fishermen out not seeming to catch much. I was fascinated with the marks left by the crabs – the patterns were amazing and in a few hours they’ll all be gone again.  I started up a new collection for Jubble – this time stones on the shore.  We headed back for dinner and an early night. It’s so lovely lying in a warm nest hearing the waves roaring nearby. What a great way to go off to sleep.


On our last day we stopped for another chat with the guy at Happy Valley before heading across the island to Kingfisher Resort and the barge home. He told us a funny story about a dingo called Eli. She wears a collar because apparently she was a bit aggressive about six months ago. The rangers put collars on dingoes that need to be monitored and the collars automatically fall off after two years. On the grills that cars drive across to get into the fenced compounds there are a few strands of electric wire to keep the dingoes out.  Apparently Eli can tell when the electricity is off and also she knows how to walk across the grill when it’s filled with sand. Recently she walked across the grill into the compound and it took several rangers all day to catch her and get her out. They’d been tracking her via the collar and trying to get her to no avail so had their smoko then moved on to another area. As soon as they’d left,  Eli came out and ate up all the crumbs and bits they’d left behind! I drove us back across the bumpy roads to Kingfisher Resort. We managed to get our washing done and car hosed off before getting on the barge.


We had pole position on the barge on the way back. Check out our view!


Fraser Island, we’ll definitely be back!