Fraser Island Great Walk Day 2
Distance walked – 14.4km
Total Distance – 41.3km
I woke early as the sun was just coming up. It had been quiet and peaceful for most of the night apart from some raucous birds about midnight. The birds were still hanging around the campsite and Louisa correctly identified them as Bush stone-curlews. According to Wikipedia, these are large ground dwelling birds most active at night. During the day they are mainly inactive and when disturbed often freeze motionless in odd-looking postures. Their call is described as an evocative and unforgettable sound. It is a penetrating strident wail like a scream in the night that is often repeated a number of times in quick succession. We can certainly attest to the fact that it is unforgettable. I thought someone was being murdered.
Bush Stone-Curlew
Dilli village in the morning sun however, seemed like the least likely place for a murder to occur. It really is a beautiful relaxed oasis. I decided to take a quick walk down to the beach before breakfast. As there are lots of dingo warnings about, I thought it prudent to take one of my walking poles with me. I followed the path signed to the beach out through one of the gates in the dingo fence. (The entire Dilli Village campsite is surrounded in a 2m high wire fence to keep dingoes out, similar to most other campsites on K’gari now.)
The path descends across a wooden bridge over a wide creek just outside the campsite (you can swim here). As I crossed the bridge and started along the sandy track to the beach, a dingo stepped out of the bush just in front of me. I froze still. He or she looked directly at me. I looked at them. They looked at me. They paused for a moment, and then slowly headed off into the bush on the other side of the path. It was a large healthy looking dingo, very different from the only other ones I have seen in the wild, that were thin and scrawny.
I rushed back to the tent to get Louisa and we both headed back down the track but there was no sign of the dingo apart from a couple of paw-prints in the sand
Dingo – according to Tracker Lou
Dingo Bridge at Dilli Village
Sunrise over Dilli Village Beach
We had a leisurely morning: breakfast of muesli and filter coffee from my new collapsible coffee maker (tea for Lou), and some more hot showers, knowing that this was the last shower for 5 days. We packed up tent and gear and set off about 08:00.
Official start of the Fraser Island Great Walk
We found the start of the Great Walk just out the back of the Dilli Village campsite and after a short section of boardwalk we were on the well kept and signed track gently undulating through beautiful bushland with wonderful towering trees. After about 4kms we arrived at a track junction where a short detour leads to the top of the Wongi Sandblow. We left our packs at the junction and climbed up the steep sandy dune to come out in the otherworld of the Wongi Sandblow.
The steep path up to the sandblow
Surveying the blow
Sandblows are formed by the constant battle between the elements and the vegetation. Where a small breach occurs, the wind can blow sand inland. This can take place over hundreds of years leading to their present-day appearance. Sandblows feel other-worldly, particularly after stepping out of the lush vegetation into the lunar-like landscape. (The Wongi Sandblow is very evident on the satellite photo of our route today – see below.)
We returned to our packs and headed off. After a further kilometre we started to catch glimpses of a mass of water through the trees. The path slowly wound down to arrive at Lake Boomanjin. Lake Boomanjin is the largest perched lake in the world. A perched lake is a lake located above the water table, that is formed by rainwater collecting in a dune depression and being unable to drain due to a bed of rotting vegetation. K’gari is home to over half the perched lakes in the world. I think they are truly amazing places.
We had decided before we started the walk, that we would try to swim in all the lakes if possible, so we left our packs in the fenced picnic area, got changed into swimming gear, and headed down the track to the lake swimming area.
After the recent rainfall of the past weeks, the lake level was very high and there was no lake shore or beach. Swimming involved negotiating a lot of sharp vegetation that is not normally underwater. Despite this the water was wonderfully refreshing, however we didn’t hang around for long as we still had a long way to go.
We wandered back up, changed and had an early lunch. Another couple arrived in a 4WD, parked up and headed down to the lake with some large inflatables. They returned not longer after and headed off. The amount of spikey vegetation had put them off as well – I don’t think the blow-up flamingo would have lasted long.
We set off again after lunch, the track initially winding around the NW edge of the lake for the first 2kms. Unfortunatley as we had already seen, the lake level was very high, and the track signs promptly disappeared into the lake edge.
The path is here somewhere….
Oh – that is deep (note the signpost at the far side on the left)
We decided that it would take too long to try to pick a way around the vegetation on the edge of the lake, so it was time to get wet. Louisa went first (well she is the tallest??), and she had a few nervous moments as the water rose nearly to her waist, but she made it over safely.
There were 2 further water crossings, neither as deep as the first, although Louisa fell into some `quicksand’ up to her thighs. She managed to extricate herself and I was not required to jump in with a vine tied around my leg. We eventually made it around the lake and headed uphill into the bush.
The afternoon became progressively hotter and quite humid. We were both feeling the effects of the big day yesterday, and getting used to walking again (second day blues), so we struggled a bit for the next few kilometres until Lake Benaroon came into view. We were grateful as the track gently wound down to the campsite located several hundred metres uphill from the shore of Lake Benaroon.
The campsite is one of the smaller walker campsites and is unfenced but does have metal storage lockers for all your food. We set up camp on one of the sites with a small walkers table and an intact metal locker (some of them have holes in them)
Our private beach
We walked down to the beach and had a wonderful swim. We had received a text earlier in the day from some good friends of ours who were holidaying in Bali with their own private pool. Louisa pointed out that we seemed to have accidentally got our own private lake for the night as no one else had turned up. (There is no car park or direct vehicle access to the lake, so it is usually only visited by people on the Fraser Island Great Walk)
We returned to camp to do some reading, and then prepared dinner. After dinner we walked back down to the lake to enjoy the evening colours. It was another great day and tomorrow it could only get better as we were headed to our favourite lake – Lake Mackenzie.
Sunset over Lake Benaroon
Todays routes (Wongi Sandblow visible at km 4 before lunch)
