We reached Fraser Island by ferryboat, the way most people do. Once there, though, the question was how to get around. The island is more than 75 miles long and there are no paved roads—just sandy tracks. You’d need three or four days to walk it end to end. You can’t drive it, not in an ordinary passenger car anyway.

We signed up with a tour company that provided us with meals, lodging, and transportation in the form of 36-passenger busses—four-wheel drive busses piloted by drivers who know how to navigate in deep sand.

I generally don’t like traveling with tour groups. While tour leaders are informative, sometimes their spiels become tedious. And it’s fun to get to know some fellow tour members, but others can be bothersome. On this trip, four young Danish women sung lustily while walking the trails, effectively eliminating wildlife sightings.

The busses were uncomfortable on smooth tracks and painful on rough ones. Most tracks were the rutted, potholed kind. After loading onto our bus at the ferry, we were treated to an additional (unnecessary to me) hour of rockin’ and rollin’ while we rode across the island to pick up a second contingent of travelers.

I complain about the bus, but other modes of island transport are expensive and can be dangerous. By taking the bus, we obtained access to places we could not have reached on our own.

—§—

During one visit to the beach, I was startled to see a small plane coming at me. Turns out, the beach is a landing strip.

In a remarkable coincidence, the plane landed right beside our group where the generous pilot offered us an opportunity to view the island from the air. $75 AUD per person, credit cards accepted. The propeller didn’t appear too badly sand pitted, so we signed on for a twenty minute flight.

Our host was a real bush pilot, a “kick the tires and light the fires” kind of guy. Seven of us clambered into his plane. He jammed the throttle in and we rolled down a flat stretch of sand. I was surprised at how effortless the takeoff was.

Our plane was equipped with a gps display, set to a scale that displayed the entire island. Just in case our pilot became confused as to where he was, I suppose.

The instrument panel included a rear view mirror (look upper left) enabling the pilot to monitor passengers for any hanky-panky. So we behaved ourselves. Except for some Danish folk song singing.

Looking out at the wing, I noticed salt air had not been kind to the hinges and actuator for the ailerons. They seemed pretty rusty to me.

In general, the tour operator seemed to be deferring maintenance. Our driver opened a hatch on our bus to admit luggage. The rusty hinges broke, the falling door barely missed the toe of one of our travel companions. That door was heavy: two men were needed to pick it up and haul it away. Lucky toe.

Minor but nonetheless telling are the rust streaks trailing from the front side window. I get uncomfortable when any public conveyance I’m traveling in shows signs of deterioration.

—§—

Most of the vehicles on Fraser Island are four wheel drive SUVs and trucks. They come over on the ferry. And they all use the best road on the island: 75-mile Beach, which is designated an Australia Gazetted Highway. In other words, it’s an official road. The speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph). Drivers exceed it.

On the weekend we were here, nine people in a rented Toyota Land Cruiser were involved in a rollover, caused when the inexperienced driver swerved to miss an incoming wave. Two were killed; the others suffered serious injuries.

A newspaper article quoted the rental car agent defending his company’s practices. He said that all drivers were shown a half-hour video on safe four-wheeling practices before being allowed to drive their vehicles.

Four wheel drive cars and trucks are common in Australia because often the only connection between places is via unpaved roads. Creeks lack bridges and have to be forded. Aspirating water can be fatal to internal combustion engines, so most fwd vehicles are fitted with snorkels. In this picture, the snorkels are the black tubes rising beside the windshields.

I find snorkels incredibly cool.

The fwd Toyota pictured below is a real man toy. The businesslike brush guard, the snorkel, the electric winch—all say, “Don’t mess with me, Matey. I’m a real outback bushwhacker.” He even has four rod holders welded to the bush guard, signaling that he’s a member of that class of fisherman so avid that he modifies his car to accommodate his gear.

I idly speculated whether he might be a chartered accountant in Brisbane.

On the ferry back to the mainland, a host of invisible bugs were infesting the passenger deck carpet. Panicked passengers wrapped their legs in beach towels. We scrambled for the insect repellant in our backpacks. Before we got the stuff slathered on, we had received hundreds of bites.

A fellow member of our tour group warned us we would be itching for days.

—§—

Sand tracks through rain forests or on beaches aren’t reliable. A number of places couldn’t be reached because cyclonic activity had cut the 75 Mile Beach Road. We would not get to see Indian Head, Coloured Sands or Hammerstone Sandblow—all promised by the tour operator, Fraser Explorer.

I particularly would have liked to visit the Maheno Shipwreck.

Photo: The Best Beaches of the World

I can’t hold Fraser Explorer responsible for natural conditions, but they in fact had known about the road closure for some time, yet didn’t feel the need to inform us that half the island features they purported to show us would be struck from our itinerary.

Even truncated, our visit to Fraser Island was worthwhile—a welcome change from the urban landscapes we have been seeing.