Fraser Island
Fraser Island is a huge sand dune that became separated from mainland Australa when the sea level rose some eight hundred million years ago. Sand islands are not all that uncommon, But Fraser Island is. It’s the largest in the world: 129 kilometers long by about 15 kilometers wide. Way bigger than Manhattan.
Did I mention that it’s made of sand? There’s very little soil or rock. The place is 99% sand, although over many millennia, plant and animal life have become established, so that today, much of the place is covered with grasses and forest.
Parts of the interior are Sahara-like. The dune pictured below is more than a hundred feet high, and it’s a little one. The highest dunes measure around 700 feet. I climbed a much smaller one and found the effort exhausting. I don’t see how people on foot survive in sandy deserts.
Desert or not, all kinds of things grow here. These red mushrooms found purchase in a bed of Casaurina needles, just a hundred meters from that tall dune.
Other ecosystems thrive here, among them wet tropical rain forests. There’s a vast amount of fresh water here. We hiked for a couple of miles along a creek running silently in a bed of white sand. There’s no rocks to make the brooks babble. All this water nourishes countless varieties of ferns, palms, lianas, and trees.
Some of the trees were monsters. The turpentine tree in the upper left photo evoked California coastal redwood forests.
Today, the island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and how it got to be one is interesting. For more than a century, Fraser Island’s ancient forests were logged. Environmentalists formed a group to protect it, but little came from their efforts. It was the loggers themselves that gave logging the fatal blow. As a publicity stunt in 1989 they posed twenty-three children on top of the stump of a recently felled tree. The photo was picked up by the press and widely distributed, provoking public outrage. A investigatory commission including some UNESCO representatives visited the island. Everyone was overwhelmed by its beauty and uniqueness. Shortly afterward, the site received World Heritage status. One condition though: no more logging.
—§—
We were provided with a naturalist guide, Chris. Here he’s explaining the life cycle of the staghorn fern. I’ve never seen one anywhere near this big.
While Chris was lecturing about epiphyte reproduction by spores, a gowanna skittered across the clearing. End of audience, end of lecture.
Fraser Island has rain forests and dry land forests full of countless eucalypts, turpentines, pines, figs and palms. The diversity is incredible.
—§—
With more than a hundred miles of coast, Fraser Island should be good for swimming and surfing. But it’s not. The surf is very rough with powerful undertow and rip tides. Moreover these waters are infested with sharks.
And the beach poses another danger—dingoes. This photo was taken from the safety of a vehicle. Looks just like a dog, doesn’t it?
That’s because dingoes are dogs. Brought to Australia thousands of years ago by Malay fishermen, today they are wild. They usually live as solitary creatures—not in packs—hunting for small game. Recently, though, they have become a menace, brought into unhealthy dependent contact with tourists who hand feed them. A dingo killed a boy on the island in 2001. Since then, visitors are warned to keep their distance.
Since the arrival of white men, dingoes have interbred with European dogs. The animals on Fraser Island are the purest remaining strain.
Smaller creatures provide some interest. This wasp (I forgot its name) is digging a den. It will capture a spider and stuff it down the hole, then lay its eggs on it. Wasp larvae will feed on the paralyzed, living spider (thus keeping their larder fresh). Nature is cruel and gross.
The beach is covered with patterns created by tiny bubbler crabs. The crabs put sand into their mouth parts and chew it for a while, extracting nutritious microorganisms and organic detritus. They spit out balls of sand when they’re done with them. They crab can make patterns like this in a few hours.
Native to these parts is the pandanus tree, used by indigenous Australians for both fiber and food. Today, baskets woven from pandanus leaves are a big tourist item.
Aerial roots give them a unique aspect. The fruit is unusual looking and not particularly nutritious, but nevertheless an important component of the early aboriginal diet.
Pandanus trees are common on Fraser Island and elsewhere; they’re also often used in gardens as specimen trees, as are the iconic Australian banksia plants, with their signature bottlebrush flowers.
Banksia employs fire to help it propagate. The bristles of the inflorescence die back leaving a knobby cone. Seeds remain encapsulated in the cone for up to seven years, until a ground fire burns under the branches. Heat is the signal that causes the cone to release its seeds, which then fall on ground enriched with ashes.
—§—
Fraser Island contains around forty lakes and numerous creeks. This creek, near the beach, has a deep amber color.
The stain comes from tea trees (melaleuca, not Camellia sinensis from which we get black tea). Oils from decaying melaleuca branches and roots readily dissolve in water. Tea tree oil is a natural antiseptic and appears to have a significant role in natural medicines and cosmetics. We all waded in the creek to heal our bug bites.
Perhaps the finest of Fraser Island’s lakes is turquoise Lake McKenzie. Called a “perched” lake because it sits high above the water table upon an old impermeable layer of decayed organic matter, it is fed only by rain water. Mildly acidic with dissolved alum, the waters leave skin soft and hair silky. Not my hair, of course. I don’t have any. But my skin felt good after I swam in it.
Melaleucas and eucalypts fringe the lake. Reeds grow along the edges, reminding me of ponds where I swam as a child.
Delicate pink rosettes grow in the powdered sugar sand. Can there be any nutrients in this soil?
These photographs don’t tell the whole story. This incredibly beautiful place is not Eden. Even now, in low season, we were just two of many visitors. Swing the camera around, and another aspect of Fraser Island comes into focus.
I enjoyed swimming at Lake McKenzie. So did a couple hundred other people.
North Queensland is full of spectacular places. Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites lie within a day’s travel of each other, and we all want to visit them. So we share them with others, often many others.