Fraser Island, Part 1

My Shadow at Lake Mackenzie
Originally uploaded by chazjac

May 2
Fraser Island
Sunny, breezy

This is the first of three blog entries about the Fraser Island camping trip. Two more will follow. I am writing these on the 4th and 5th, after our return to Brisbane.

The drive from Brisbane to Rainbow Beach is a little tedious, and one of the things I will seek to alter in the future. But there's little to be done about it; it's not likely that we'll move the island closer to the city -- and I don't think we'd want to, anyway.

But I cannot say that the scenery is bad; quite the contrary. And it is really only the second chance the students have had to see something outside the city. One of the things I think I might want to do in future offerings of the course is to decrease the big city portion and have more country experiences. But that's for another day. North of Brisbane on the way to Rainbow Beach lies a lot of pulpwood plantations that we passed through, so that's perhaps what made it a little boring.

We stopped for lunch at the seaside village of Rainbow Village, a pleasant little town just a few minutes from the barge ferry that would take us to Fraser Island. We had about an hour to wander around and eat. I ordered a hamburger made in the Aussie fashion -- and that means beets. Yes, they put a slice of beetroot on their burgers. Now I love beets, and having them on a burger is fine -- but definitely an Aussie thing.

Our tour guides are Reg, Wes, and Graham. Joining us for the first days were eight American students; they are on a weekend jaunt from some universities and are led by another guide, Matt. And Brendan, a guide I knew from years past, just showed up on the night of the 3rd with some backpackers.

Reg is the oldest of the bunch, roughly my age (early-mid 50s). He's had an interesting life in and out of the tourism industry; I think this is a semi-retirement position for him, taking jobs as he pleases. A very pleasant fellow that the students like a lot. The other guides are much younger. Wes is the driver of the LandCruiser I am riding in. He and Graham are both surfers, and in fact ran off several times looking for the perfect wave during today's stops. He's a nice man, but very young. The girls adore him. They like Graham too. He's a lot like Wes -- I think they're mates away from the job -- but sports a large set of dreadlocks, as does Brendan. Matt reminds me of the sidekick in Shaun of the Dead.

We crossed over to the Island via a small ferry barge. There were three that I saw operating, and probably were normally kept busy. Th island does seem oddly quiet -- it is, after all, a holiday weekend. Once on the island, we went driving up the beach at highway speed.

Fraser Island is a sand island, an accumulation of sand against a harder undersea mountain, taking place over eons. It is the largest such island in the world. This gives the island a very unique geography: sand dunes held in place with dense vegetation; sub-tropical rainforests inland; about 75 miles of beach on the seaward side; mangroves on the side facing the mainland.

Dingoes are the wild dogs of Australia, and Fraser Island is the last place on earth that one can find dingoes that have a purely dingo ancestry -- I am reluctant to call them 'purebred' because that implies a breeding program that does not exist. But most of the dingoes on the mainland have interbred with the European dogs brought by the settlers, so the pure dingo line no longer exists there. To keep the population on Fraser Island pristine, no one can bring a dog onto the island for any reason.

As we were driving along, we saw a woman outside a truck with a medium-sized dingo with dark honey-colored fur. It was very comfortable with her, and did not run away when we pulled up for a photo. But once several other cars pulled up for a photo, it ran off. Wes told us the woman is a researcher who is studying the dingo; apparently befriending them and gaining their trust along the way.

We also saw a sea snake as we drove along, and stopped for some pictures of it. It was a sad event, though; the snake had been washed ashore with the tide and was clearly exhausted with the struggle to regain the water. They are highly venomous and aggressive, so there was nothing we could do. The tide was coming in, but the guides figured that the snake would become a meal for a dingo or a sea eagle in awhile.

After dumping our bags at camp, Our first stop was Lake Mackenzie, a window lake. Window lakes are clear like a pane of glass, but they are so named for a different reason. Fraser Island has a fresh water table about 30 metres above sea level -- though they do mix, fresh water will tend to float on salt water. When the sand dune level on the island drops below the water table, a pool of fresh water forms, essentially a window into the water table.

The water in Lake Mackenzie is acidic, enough so that the acid combined with the fine silica sand will act as a metal polish. Tour guides often invite people to put rings or other jewelry into the lake to see the effect. The acid level keeps most fishes out; only a few turtles populate the lake. The water is one of the deepest blues one might ever see, and the sand is as white as snow and as fine as popcorn salt.

The walk-around would take too long to complete for the time we have at the lake, but I do manage to get to the second beach, effectively hidden from the first by a stand of paperbark trees. Since it is seldom used, this beach does sport some life not found on the heavily used main beach. There's a small red carnivorous plant called a sundew that secretes a sweet and sticky substance to attract ants and other small insects. Once the animal has approached, the red branches curl over it and the plant proceeds to digest it.

After the evening camp meal, my colleague gave a lecture on the Southern Sky. Because our heads are inverted in relation to yours in America, the constellations that we both can see appear upside-down to us. Leo is lying on his back, for instance. On the other hand, Orion is still in the West in the evening, and because of its proximity to the celestial equator, does not appear much different. And there are some things that we can no longer see down here: we can only see some stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, though it is almost directly overhead for you at night.

Just as pointer stars in the Big Dipper helps one locate the relatively dim North Star, anyone in the Southern Hemisphere can use the Southern Cross to find south. And because there are 'false crosses' in the sky, the Southern cross itself is located with two bright pointer stars in the constellation Centaurus. One of those, Alpha Centauri, is the closest visible star outside of our solar system.

The Southern Cross lies in the Milky Way, the edge-on view we have of our home galaxy. One can see much of the Milky Way in the Southern Sky at this time of year, and the view is spectacular. The Cross and the constellation next to it, Carinae, contain the Carina Arm of the Galaxy, the one in which our own solar system lies. The constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius contain the galactic center, an area so bright that we would cast shadows at night from it were it not for the immense dust clouds that block our view. Still, the image of the Milky Way Galaxy spread out before us like that is pretty unforgettable.

Toward the south celestial pole are many celestial sights of interest. There are two objects that look like clouds at first, until one realizes that they move with the sky and not with the wind. These are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, small dwarf galaxies that orbit our own. The clouds themselves are visible with the naked eye, though a small pair of binoculars would reveal individual stellar structure.

After the Star lecture, we all went off to sleep, resting up for the next day's adventures. I will write about those in the next entry.