Fraser Island Great Walk
The Fraser Island Great Walk has been on our radar and to do list since we moved back to Brisbane about a year ago. Having finally made the decision to semi-retire from the end of this year and alternate working for several months with undertaking some of the great walks of the world we have decided to use our last weeks’ annual leave from our full-time jobs to complete The Fraser Island Great Walk in preparation for our big walk next year.
In recent years Fraser Island is once again being called by its original indigenous name K’gari. K’gari means paradise in the language of the Butchulla people, the traditional owners of the island.
Louisa and I have both loved K’gari since both travelling there in about 1993 with a group of friends before we were going out. I, in fact had been to K’gari even earlier in about 1980 when I was invited by a friend at primary school to spend a weeks holiday with his family at Happy Valley. I still have vivid cherished memories of travelling along the beaches and visiting the Champagne Pools, Indian Head, swimming in Eli creek and climbing on the wreck of the Maheno during that wonderful week.
When we returned to Australia from the UK in 2017, one of the first places we went was K’gari. We took our two daughters for a three day tour with a company called Drop Bear Adventures/K’gari Adventures. We had an absolutely amazing time, and during that visit we became aware of The Fraser Island Great Walk as we saw some of the signs and information boards whilst travelling around. Since that trip we have wanted to go back to K’gari and undertake the walk.
Planning
Our main resources for planning the walk have been –
This is an excellent walking guide book that covers most of the areas in south East Queensland. It has a whole chapter on the Fraser Island Great Walk with a suggested daily itineary and track notes for the days. It also has lots of interesting background information on K’gari. It is available from their website as an e-book or paper copy. I have also seen it for sale at some of the outdoor shops including Wild Earth in Brisbane.
The website is a bit difficult to navigate and individual pages are often difficult to find but there is some useful information. The Fraser Island Great Walk page has some short summaries and distances of each stage and the map resources page has a PDF copy of the Topographic map which is useful for planning.
All the campsites have to be booked from the camping booking page which is a separate site. This requires you to create a login and initially seems a bit clunky but it does let you book the multiple campsites for the whole week at one time by choosing The Fraser Island Great walk and the stay duration of the total number of nights. The current fees are $7 per person per night which seems fair as the money hopefully goes towards maintenance of the track and campsites. (The Dilli Village campsite is run privately and can be booked from their website).
This is the definitive map of the route and includes all campsites and points of interest with distances between. We think it will be needed when on the track to plan the days and give an estimate of the distances between points. The track is apparently very well signed and it could easily be walked without a map, but the map is really essential for planning escape routes etc if an emergency occurs whilst walking. The National Parks website lists where they can be purchased. We plan to purchase a copy at Rainbow beach on the day prior to the walk. We have used the excellent PDF copy available on the website when planning this walk.
4. Blogs
I couldn’t find many blogs covering the walk. The best by far is Melly Takes a Walk which has been very useful in planning our walk. Her blog is really well written and entertaining and covers many other walks as well.
Stages and Timing
We decided early on to walk from the barge drop off at Hook Point along the DIlli Village walk as it will make the walk continuous from the barge landing to Happy Valley. It also means we only have to organise one taxi transfer.
A great option if we had more time would be to start in Noosa and walk the Cooloola Great Walk over five days ending in Rainbow Beach (camping one night at Inskip Point), and then catch the barge over to K’gari for the Fraser Island Walk. This would mean leaving a car in Noosa and getting a transfer back on the daily Greyhound bus from Rainbow Beach to Noosa. A great walk for another day. . . .
We have planned a six day itinerary with the following stages –
1. Hook Point to Dilli Village
2. Dilli Village to Lake Benaroon
3. Lake Benaroon to Lake McKenzie
4. Lake McKenzie to Lake Wabby
5. Lake Wabby to Valley of the Giants
6. Valley of the Giants to Happy Valley
We have contemplated staying over in Happy Valley for one night at the end of the walk, but the accommodation options are pretty limited and nothing special, so we have decided to head back on the same day.
The taxi transfer needs to be booked ahead with Fraser Island Taxi Service. They are really helpful friendly people on the telephone. You do need to take into account the tide time when planning the transfer from Happy Valley to Hook Point.
The walk is officially open from 1st March until the 31st October. We plan to walk in the last official week which means it should be warm enough to swim but not too hot for walking. After the 31st of October there would be a risk that it would be too hot to walk and there is increasing bushfire risk as the summer progresses.
