The spectacular unknown side of Queensland’s most accessible island
The traditional Fraser Island holiday used to go something like this: blokes get together in four-wheel drives (rented or BYO), camp in the dunes, get sunburnt, drink beer and fish. Occasionally there were family add-ons; especially if your kids weren’t of the variety that spent their lives in front of the TV, or if partners didn’t need the finer things in life, like flush toilets.
Guests explore K’gari’s underrated western side on a Tasman Venture tour.
But the Fraser Island holiday has changed. For starters, Fraser Island doesn’t even exist anymore. I’m on the other side of the island formerly known as Fraser, in a catamaran I’m skippering myself. The island’s long been known for its 120-kilometre-long ocean-side beach, but this calm western side is all part of Queensland’s most accessible marine playground, and its most unknown.
I’m on a holiday that captures all parts of the Fraser Coast, including the areas we’ve never known to go to before. I’m anchored in the lee of a small island within The Great Sandy Strait, part of a half-million hectare marine park – and near-million hectare parcel of land – within the Great Sandy Biosphere. Designated by UNESCO as a reserve of cultural and ecological significance, it’s actually in the same class as the Galapagos Islands, the Central Amazon and Uluru. It’s home to dugongs, turtles and rare Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins and with its unique sailing conditions, variety of anchorages and scenery rivals the much better known Whitsunday Islands – one of the world’s most popular bareboat yacht charter destinations.
Take a bareboat charter off K’gari’s west coast in the Great Sandy Strait.
“It’s a lot easier to navigate here than the Whitsundays because there’s less reef,” Fraser Island Boat Charters co-owner, Scott Whitcombe, tells me. “And there’s no crocs here either, or Irukandji (marine stingers) like you get in the Whitsundays. There’s less swell too with K’gari there as a buffer, and of course, we have all the whales.”
The Great Sandy Strait is part of Hervey Bay – the first whale heritage site in the world, the best place on Earth to watch whales at rest and play because it’s a protected stopover site for whales mid-migration (it’s also a creche for newborns). Last night, under a full moon, I watched three whales with their calves swim right beside the boat, hearing the sharp release of breath as they surfaced metres from where I sat in the cockpit.
The average charter period in the Great Sandy Strait is between three and five days, and guests can sail all the way to the remote north-west coast to areas like Platypus Bay where few vehicles venture on the mostly 4WD drive island. But I have a lot to cover, so I return my catamaran and take the car ferry across from River Heads near Hervey Bay to Kingfisher Bay, roughly half-way down K’gari’s west coast.
Kingfisher Bay Resort was one of the first eco-tourism resorts in Australia when it opened in 1992, the same year K’gari earned its World Heritage status. It’s the most luxurious accommodation option on K’gari, and it’s the best gateway to explore the rest of the island. There’s a more basic resort, K’gari Beach Resort, 20 kilometres east on 75 Mile Beach, and a glamping option (Beachcamp Eco Retreat), but otherwise you’ll be camping at one of 45 designated camping areas spread across the island.
Whales have always been a favoured reason to visit the area in winter and spring.
There’s a wildness about K’gari you feel the moment you land on the island: cars often get bogged less than a minute off the ferry. Visitors can self-drive, or join tag-along tours or book tours across the island. There are over 250 kilometres of beaches, and virgin rainforest growing right out of the sand, beside 40 lakes and creeks (the most iconic of them, Lake McKenzie, is considered one of the world’s clearest freshwater lakes). The ocean beach doubles as a Queensland state highway, providing access to many of K’gari’s best attractions, making self-driving a good option for experienced 4WDers. But with limited 4WD skills and time against me, I take a day tour with K’gari Explorer Tours, riding in a custom-made bus whose soft suspension takes the pain out of the bumps. I stop along the way to take a 20-minute scenic flight over the island on-board the only plane in the world which takes off and lands on the beach.
K’gari’s west coast has often been overlooked by visitors.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland
Fraser Island was officially changed to its local Butchulla name, K’gari (meaning ‘paradise’) in June last year. Local Indigenous guide Dingka Dingka tells me he cried at the naming ceremony when he saw his elders sobbing with tears. “We always called this place K’gari, we know it’s paradise,” he tells me. The island’s former name came from an old English mariner who was shipwrecked off K’gari. His wife, Eliza, survived thanks to the local Indigenous people. When she was rescued, she invented tales of hellish captivity, even cannibalism in what’s regarded as her attempt at attracting publicity.
Her exaggerations and mistruths had terrible repercussions for the Butchulla people. Salt was rubbed into already deep wounds when British colonists chose to name the island after the couple. “Think of Uluru, no-one calls it Ayers Rock anymore,” Kingfisher Bay general manager Kane Bassett says. “Give it a few years, no-one will call this Fraser Island.”
There’s much more to see of K’gari than most people know, and for those unable to negotiate the steep sand tracks and often-bonnet-deep water crossings of the island’s remote north-west coast, a tour by boat from Hervey Bay or Kingfisher Bay Resort is the best way to venture deeper.
Once the province of local boaties, 4WD experts and only the most self-sufficient of campers, a growing number of marine tour operators now offer half and full day tours to K’gari’s north-west coastline. These also carry the bonus of guaranteed close encounters with humpback whales should you travel between mid-July and late-October.
I take a full day tour from Hervey Bay. Within an hour we’re traversing K’gari’s remote north-west coast towards Platypus Bay of silica white sands and blue water. We stop to kayak up two remote creeks – Wathumba and Awinya – through a maze of waterways within secluded bays, beneath shady paperbark trees, where I look for eels, sting rays, turtles, Mangrove Jack and mullet as white bellied sea eagles patrol above.
Prime kayaking … K’gari’s natural vegetation in a stream.
The creeks are tidal, and have their own beaches. Behind most of the beaches on this coastline are tall, ancient, coloured sand dunes. I walk up one for 360 degree views of the island and can’t see any sign of development. At the last creek, Bowaraddy Creek, someone’s tied a rope around the branch of a paperbark tree.
There’s only one 4WD here (it takes over six hours to get here from the ocean side of K’gari), camped beside the water. Its occupants and I take turns leaping off the swing into the crystal-clear water.
On the way back to Hervey Bay, a pod of young male humpbacks circle the boat. One wants a closer look at us, so we’re fed out along ropes in the water where we lie prone with a mask and snorkel as a 10-metre-long whale eyeballs us.
Sunset drinks at Kingfisher Bay Resort.
The fish – mostly whiting - are still biting along K’gari’s far better-known eastern 75 Mile Coast. The sun’s still burning too, and the beer’s even colder now that eskies are as high-tech as your TV used to be. You may prefer to rent or take your own 4WD and see K’gari how we used to all see it. But these days, that’s just the start of what’s up here.
THE DETAILS
More
Fly
Fly to the Fraser Coast direct from Sydney and Melbourne with Jetstar (jetstar.com.au), or via Brisbane – Qantas (qantas.com) fly direct to the Fraser Coast from Brisbane.
Stay
The four-star eco-resort, Kingfisher Bay Resort, on K’gari’s west coast costs from $199 a night. See kingfisherbay.com
Ramada Hervey Bay, beside the water in a self-contained apartment costs from $153 a night. See ramadaherveybay.com.au
Tour
Charter your own yacht or use a skipper with Fraser Island Boat Charters. See fraserislandboatcharters.com.au
Take a day trip out to K’gari’s most remote reaches and see whales from $149. See tasmanventure.com.au
See the most iconic attractions on K’gari in a day on a tour from $249. See kingfisherbay.com
Take a tour of Hervey Bay to hear of the region’s Indigenous past with guide Dingka Dingka from $59. See herveybayecomarinetours.com.au
Get closer to whales than you ever thought possible from $225. See diveherveybay.com.au
The writer travelled courtesy of Fraser Coast Tourism & Events.
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