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Fraser Island Beaches
75 Mile Beach

australia tours  intrepid

Intrepid run 33 lively, good value, different tours of Australia, including overland adventures along the East Coast. All Australia Trips | East Coast Explorer
Cape York Discoverer | Fraser Island & Reef Experience

Lake McKenzie Pictures, Australia

75 Mile Beach - race track, landing strip but hardly a bathing beach.

Click for Lake McKenzie Pictures

Fraser Island's biggest highway, 75 Mile Beach - incorrectly guesstimated by Captain Cooke and actually 58 miles long - is also the local runway.
This route is popular with tour buses, particularly day trip groups from Hervey Bay, which are keen to waste the punter's morning in the easiest possible way. Tourists shuffle morosely down a freshwater stream called Eli Creek, stand in less than awe before a rusting wreck and finally gaze blankly at a small cliff stained vaguely yellow/orange. And to cap it all punters cannot swim for fear of Tiger sharks but are encouraged to take a short $60 flight over the island. Sharks all around it seems. Just say nay!

Fraser's magic lies inland, with walks through the rainforest, over monster dunes and swimming from white powder beaches in spectacular azure freshwater lakes. But to focus on these you will need to abandon most pathetic tours and choose one that delivers the real thing [i.e. inland], or use your own 4WD, rented and brought over from the mainland or rented on the island. Hervey Bay's backpacker places are well set up to organise small groups of travellers into an economic 4WD force.
There is a reasonable selection of accommodation on the island so try to arrange at least two nights stay and three days driving. Here are some pictures of Fraser Island's disappointing 'attractions'.

Eli creek, Fraser Island, Australia

Eli Creek's five minute watery walk. An adrenalin rush for 80 year-olds, perhaps.

Maheno wreck,  Fraser Island, Australia

The wreck of passenger ship Maheno. No touching. Yawn.

Fraser Island,  Lake McKenzie Pictures, Australia

The last banal sight of a disappointingly dull morning, the Pinnacles, snore. But Lake McKenzie is amazing!

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Pictures © bugbog.com