Camp # 25, Days 73 to 77 – Yeppoon, QLD

After Fraser we overnighted at Tin Can Bay again, before pushing north. Needing to get a move on and get some kilometers clocked today we past a few places we would like to have stopped at. But we have realized you just cant see everything. Being in school holidays now we have booked ahead and the kids are going to love this one. A Discovery Park with bouncing pillow, water slides, bmx track and more.

Yeppon Lagoon, looking out to Great Keppel Island after missing the ferry. Notice the wind. Looks perfect but it was pretty chilli.

With so much at the park to entertain the kids it was a great opportunity for Ken and I to catch up on a few things and after 5 days on Fraser Island washing was top of the list. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t kind, being humid and overcast, getting anything dry was challenging. It felt like I was chasing up and waiting for washing machines and dryers to be finished of free for two entire days. And having put over $20 worth of one dollar coins into the machines. I am certainly glad we have our own matchine in the vans and can avoid using the machines in the caravan parks most of the time. Just the shear volume this time and the weather got the better of our little 2kg washer.

It’s getting tropical when stag horn ferns are growning out of the drainpipes

Yeppon is just north of Rockhampton on the Capricorn coast. I was expecting a sleepy little place but not the case. Anything that has a McDonalds, Target, BigW is considered civilization. The Keppel Islands are just off the coast, Great Keppel being the largest and most well known.

Charlotte got this shot. A chip of the old block.

We have lost a little momentum on planning and sight seeing but have engrossed ourselves in an audiobook detailing the life and history of Captain James Cook. It’s has gripped both Ken and my interest and has meant we haven’t been blogging or planning much. This contributed to our failing to catch the ferry in time to make it to Great Keppel for the day. We must have looked quiet rediculous turning up an hour late for the only ferry of the day. So disorganized but on the upside, it did provide Llewella with the opportunity to learn a new phase, which she delighted in repeating over and over.

“Oh no, missed boat!”

”Yes love we missed to the boat.”

Epic fail Mum and Dad, and bless her, she reminded us all day and the next day and every time she sees a boat now.

So while in Yeppon we enjoyed a couple of meals in town, a little bit of shopping, a beautiful drive and drone flight at Sandy Point, a bike ride, explored the foreshore with its amazing new lagoo / water park and the water slides in the caravan park were a hit.

Next we are looking to do some free camping. Having been parked under a pretty large tree here it meant we needed to give the solar panels a good clean. With the cloudy days we have been having and free camping ahead of us we are going to need all the solar power we can get.

Sandy point

# 24, Days 67 to 71 – Fraser Island, QLD

Fraser is a bit of a ‘Mecca’ for 4WD enthusiasts and it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. With us having to get up to Cape York and back before we head to the UK we did wonder if we had the time, but with being so close and unsure when we’d be in this area again it wasn’t too hard to commit.

Colin the service manger at Zone RV suggested we take the Van, but this early into the trip and not yet quite knowing how well I can tow tonne 3.5T through soft sand we had settled for leaving the van in Tin Can Bay, taking AUdrey the cruiser and staying at Kingfisher Bay resort on the west of the island.

We caught the ferry at River Heads, just outside of Harvey Bay. The weather was gorgeous and we could see a couple of dolphins playing just where the barge was moored before coming into pick us up.

Thirty minutes later we we’re rolling off up the wooden pier to the resort. I did wonder  if I needed to deflate the tyres before getting on the island but the resort was mostly tarmaced – the sand would come later!

The bay looked fantastic with a few sailing boats moored up – reminded me very much of Monkey Mia in WA. After getting ourselves orientated we headed back down the beach to watch the sunset before dinner. What a sunset it was – the best so far of the trip.

 

After a buffet breakfast (the girls do love a buffet) we aimed to go visit the east of the Island and the wreck of the SS Maheno.

It was nearly right way we left the comfort of the bitumen and really got to understand what is meant by Fraser being the largest sand island in the world. Dropped the tire pressures to 25psi all round and drove over the Dingo Proof electrified cattle grid that helped protect the resort.

The tracks are narrow, with regular passing points but go straight through and up and down the island cutting through the differing forests. The tracks are not particularly tricky, but you do have to concentrate having to slow right down regularly so I don’t have our passengers and fridge bouncing off the roof or slicing open a tire with a jagged tree root. 

The colours of forrest and sounds of the birds are soul warming. My new favourite – the Eastern Whip Bird – or as I like to call it the ‘Whip-Saw Bird’ sounds powerful, piercing through the trees. 

It takes quite a while (at least an hour) to cross the width of the island to get to the Eastern beaches, but you are well rewarded leaving the closed in forest track and opening up to the wide expanse of Eastern beaches and the constant rolling waves of the sea.

We learned that the Western end of the Island is receding by 1cm per year while the Eastern end is growing at 2cm. So the Island is constantly getting bigger.

Driving up the beach at 80km/h is fun. You feel the sand through the steering wheel, there is a bit of looseness and a lag when turning. The word that comes to mind when trying to describe it is ‘flowing’, it kind’a reminds me of skiing!

There were a few occasions when we had to brake hard at washouts (caused by creeks running into the sea) that suddenly appeared in view, sliding 3.5 tonnes of car up the beach. A couple of times we needed to reverse a bit after these quick stops, to go either closer to the sea or island to find a less steep point to cross.

Leonie deciding to drive up one such ‘washout’ which turned out to be a reasonable creek!

When we’ve been driving north up the beach for at least 30 minutes you start to understand the scale of Fraser. It’s length is about 120km (same length as Hardrian’s Wall), and you can basically drive the whole Eastern side.

Eventually a large shape comes into view on the beach way in the distance through the sea spray, It’s awesome driving closer up the beach and seeing the shape come into focus and eventually drive right up beside Fraser’s famous landmark – the wreck of the Mahino.

Turns out the SS Mahino was built in Dumbarton, Scotland which is less than 5 miles away from where I was born!

And just to give us the prefect Fraser shot – a Dingo rocks up.

This is what the Mahino looked like in it’s heyday as an ocean liner transporting passengers between New Zealand and Australia around 1905.

All the kids wanted to do the next day was chill by the restort pool. So  we went for a (long!) wander down the beach toward the old jetty. It turned out to be very long walk, but the girls had a ball especially seeing the thousands of soldier crabs marching down the beach.

Fraser’s other most famous attraction Lake Makenzie was on the agenda the next day, but the weather was looking a bit iffy! 

Lulu at Lake McKenzie

Sure enough, we we’re on the beach for about 20 mins and it started to bucket it down. So  we went to one of the fenced (dingo proof) picnic areas to have our luxury packed lunch the resort had made for us and I decided to go for a short walk along a tiny bit of Frasers great walk which goes through the length of the island.  

On the walk I came across this waterhole/billabong through the trees and knew it would make some great footage/photo, which I ended up entering in a Fraser calendar competition. Of course, another downpour occurred with me 2km from the lake. Forest was beautiful in the rain though. 

We checked out the fine dining restaurant that night and couldn’t go past their Fraser interpretation of Chilli Sand Crab – correct choice! The girls, with Charlotte in particular love going to proper restaurants and mostly behave brilliantly, meaning Leonie and I can have a great time as well.

Another big forest and eastern beach driving day with some great winter weather took us to Champagne Pools near the northern tip of the Island and Eli Creek on the way back.

The Champagne Pools get its name from the way the ocean waves spill over as froth into the natural pools. The girls loved it, the colours we’re magical and there we’re even a few large fish in the pools. (Nice recommendation Shane V).

It’s quite amazing to find out that Eli Creek’s flows 4 million listers of fresh water into the ocean every hour! It’s a popular spot and the girls had a ball floating down it twice.

On our final day, as we planned to leave Fraser via the other ferry point on the south of the island taking us to Inskip Point, we had time to squeeze in a sea kayak to a little mangrove lined creek just north of the resort in the morning. Leonie loves canoeing, but it turned out Llewella wasn’t that keen so it ended up being quite stressful intermingled with some real beauty.

The drive to the souther tip was majestic given the weather really turned it on. We watched a pod of dolphins while waiting on the beach for the ferry to pick us up. There is facebook page called ‘I got bogged at Inskip Point’, so I made sure I was in low-range coming off the ferry and kept the gas on till clear of the point, turned out to be a non event, the rains must have made the sand nice and firm.

Easily go back to Fraser, we really only saw a fraction of it, might even take the van next time, or better still just the 4WD and a couple mates.