Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world. It is the enormous accumulation of sand during glacial periods. Because it is so large it is unique in that it has many distinct vegetation communities, including rainforest! We were there for 5 days with my Australia's Terrestrial Environment class. Something really cool about Fraser is that there are no paved roads. The highway is the beach that runs along the eastern side of the island. So to get around you have to go 4WD (above). At first I was a bit dubious of this off roading method of travel, but by the end of the trip I really enjoyed it! Another wonderful thing about driving along the beach was that we got to see Dingos (below)!!! They were a highlight of the trip. Fraser is home to the largest pure population of Dingos in Australia. It was amazing to see these animals in the wild. They look like dogs, but reddish and a bit more mangy. They also act like dogs and play around. But they have social dynamics more like wolves and can be dangerous to small children (and also small adults according the the ranger, which I was NOT pleased to hear). Apparently if you see a dingo you are supposed to cross your arms in front of you and stand back to back, we never needed to do this for safety reasons, but it became an ongoing joke of the trip to "assume the Dingo position."
We also hiked an absolute ton on this trip. Some of the trails were all sand, some had mosquitos, but all were beautiful! And all of them ended at a lake, which was really nice because then we got to go swimming. The lakes on Fraser are formed as a fresh water table accumulates on top of the salt water from the ocean, in certain areas with less topography the water table peeks above the surface and you get these beautiful clear lakes (see below). My favorite was lake McKenzie. It was huge and clear and I got to snorkel in it! But the best part was that we found turtles swimming in the lake. We caught a baby one and I got to hold him. He was super cute, and it was the first time that I held a turtle!
Of course, most of this trip was work rather than play. We had to do transacts every day that we were on the island. We did them on the dunes, in the rainforest, and in the Eucalypt forests. Though these activities weren't that fun, the places that we were explored were stunning. Particularly the rainforest (below), it was really cool and felt like I was in a dream. Also there were no leeches. We had been dreading the rainforest hike because we were scared of the land leeches, but we didn't see any so we were able to just enjoy a wonderful time among the trees. On our way out of the rainforest, well, it really lived up to it's name. Torrential rain started to fall, and we had to hike back out. It was really wet, but made it feel more like an authentic rainforest.
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