Hervey bay is the our port of departure to arrival at the natural beauty of Fraser Island. This 3 day trip is a self guided driving tour with other random people. We basically got a 4×4 van with all the necessary camping equipment and a group was allocated to it. We attended a briefing before we departed where we got to meet the other 6 people in our group; Aimee, Neil, Henry, Gai, Jale and Maria. As it was a a self guided adventure, we had to carry out a group shop for food supplies that would last us the 3 days.

Once all the admin and food shopping was done, we headed off to the ferry which would take us to Fraser Island. The first stop when we arrive on Fraser Island was the beautiful green Lake Wabby. It was a nice relaxing lake which enabled us to cool down in the sweltering heat.

It wasn’t long after until we left and drove along the loose sandy tracks on to the long 74 mile beach where we would float along the sand with the waves breaking just before they hit the side of our 4×4. We finally camp in a pretty rough spot for our first night. We had plenty of goon (bagged wine) to have some fun that night along with free salsa lessons from the experts Jale and Maria.

We had an early start to the next day as we had to reach the Champagne pools before high tide would block off the beach road that provides access to its. Champagne pools, aptly named because when the waves crash in to the walls of the rock pools, it looks very much like the champagne flowing out of a bottle when it breaches the walls. The champagne pools is only place you can safely swim and wade in the sea water as the rest of the coastline of Fraser Island is littered with jellyfish, sharks and stingrays.

Afterwards, we visited Indian Head, a small hill that provided great views of the coastline and cleat blue sea where we could see dolphins, large stingrays and sharks traversing the waters.

When high tide was over, we headed to Eli Creek which was a tiny stream where you can float along by the current from one end to the other.

Our last night of camping was a big night as all of the 5 groups of 4×4s that started this trip together picked the same spot to camp. This meant a fairly large gathering and a heavy night of partying commenced.

Despite the late night finish, we still had to get up early again to beat high tide. We were the second from last group to leave promptly at 7am and drove towards Central Station. Central station was and old logging station, but there wasn’t much interest for us to stay long and so we headed straight to stunning Lake McKenzie, where the sand is white and the water is clear blue.

Lake McKenzie was definitely the best part of the island and probably the busiest. We leave Lake McKenzie late afternoon to catch the ferry back to the mainland.

The only bad thing about Fraser Island are the gigantic march flies. Hundreds of flies, the size of a walnut, welcome you in the morning as you stumble out of the tent. Not only, do swarms of them just land on you, the nasty things bite! There’s no big enough bottle of insect repellent out there to keep them away. The only way is to fight back and swat them.

The overall self guided, self drive tour worked out much better than I thought. We had a lot of fun and met made a lot of new friends. This is not only one of the cheapest ways of seeing the only, but one of the best.