When we first arrived at Rainbow we took a quick observation of the beach and the area then headed to the nearest shop to get an idea of what to do in the area and book our trip out to Fraser Island. The lady that helped us in the shop gave us so much great information about the area and no doubt made our stay there even better. From the shop we headed out to Carlo Sand Blow which is a giant, breathtaking, sand dune. To get there we parked in a shaded lot then walked through a path in the forest that opened up on the most vast expanse of sand that I've ever seen. The juxtaposition of the thick greenery to the wide open sand made it even more mind blowing. It's frustrating because pictures just do no justice.
We ran and wandered around for a while, took some pictures, marveled. The lady from the shop had recommended we buy a boogie board with a hard plastic bottom to go 'sledding' down the dunes, so we tried that out. That also resulted in us not being completely grit-free for quite a few days afterwards. We've got a few good videos of it but alas I can't get them on here.
That night we staked out our campsite by the beach, then laid on the beach reading until the sun set.
The thing about it being "winter" here is then sun sets at 5:30-6ish (later the further north we get) so there's a lot of time in the dark trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. We read or plan the next day or lately we've been playing cards or occasionally finding friends to hang out with. OR sometimes we just go to bed with the sun and wake up with the sun (which was originally a really hard concept for me to deal with because I constantly feel like I need to be doing something productive with my time, turns out you can just sit and appreciate or observe [truth be told Mard is better at this than me, I can do it for so long but then I get antsy or a little mad at myself for wasting time]).
Anywhooo...
The next day we headed on our trip to Fraser Island. The bus picked us up and drove on to the barge to take us from the point to the island (I think that would have to be one of the most boring jobs ever driving that barge the 10 minutes back and forth all day every day between the mainland and the island). Our bus was four wheel drive to drive through the rainforest paths and on the beach. It was built kind of like a bus on top of a semi with a trailer - the driver moved somewhat independent from us in the back.
Our driver/tour guide was great and knew so much about the island and the history and the vegetation and made the trip a great experience. Fraser is the largest sand island in the world and is the only place where rainforest grows on sand. Its history includes sand mining and logging, but is luckily now protected and on the World Heritage list.
The weather wasn't incredibly warm that day, but we were able to swim in the fresh water of Lake McKenzie which is one of few 'perched' or elevated freshwater lakes in the world and wander trough rainforest to Wanggoolba Creek which was unbelievably clear! Unfortunately the tide was really high that day so much so that we weren't actually able to drive further north to the afternoon portion of our trip to see the Pinnacles and the Maheno ship wreck. Our tour guide was great and shared some pictures and all the information and history that we would have learned and looking on the bright side (because I love the bright side) we got half of our money back.
We DID however get to see a DINGO! Which is a wild dog and relative of the Japanese wolf - the purest breed of the dingo exists on Fraser.
The picture you see though the front window of the bus is us driving back to the barge when the tide was high and crashing into the side of the dunes. A bit scary. The next picture is the vehicles ahead of us getting back on to the barge to head back to the mainland.
That evening we sat around a campfire at our 'neighbours', Jill and Steve, who were local to the area and had lots of good advice on what to see and where to go next.
Our last day at Rainbow/Inskip we drove out to Poona Lake Rec area and hiked 2.2km through rainforest to the freshwater lake. Mardee was nice enough to carry my bag for me so I could run back and I found the most effective way to increase my mile pace: hurdle a snake that is across your path and may be either harmless or deadly, hard to tell!
We drove back to the beach for the afternoon, made some delicious guacamole (as you can see in the picture of the back of the van), and laid on the beach.
We concluded our afternoon with our first (cold) shower since our departure! (ps. and showered again since)
- Sabrina, Bina, Wood
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