Benemma

Chapter 1: Island of Dreams and Nightmares (20-23 Jan)

I had heard of Fraser Island from friends and travel magazines but Emma hadn’t. I knew we had to go there if we could. It didn’t take much describing before the island’s siren-like allure sank into Emma too. The thing is, it would have been unthinkable for us to fund a trip there this far into our travels. But we had Derek and Margaret. They’d given us a 4×4, food and cash, we just couldn’t believe our fortune. Steve filled the boot of our car with everything we could want and more: a 4×4 rescue kit, an air compressor and tire gauge, a tent, deckchairs, rugs, fishing rod and tackle, torch, ice box… There’s more but I can’t remember it all. Thus loaded, we hit the road again.

Now please give a moment to this. We had left home over four months previously. Our lives were packed into two rucksacks each weighing under 15Kgs and a pair of small day bags, supported by the combined wealth of our savings plus the generosity of our friends and family. Picture how we felt then, high up over the blacktop behind the wheel of our kitted-out car, roaring up a coastal highway with the radio blaring and the smell of diesel riding with us in the cab.

By the time we reached the ferry point at Inskip, having only stopped for fuel and supplies of fresh food, the day was behind us and the last ferry would depart soon. A sign on the beach road said, “Switch to four-wheel drive now”, so we did, for the first time our lives. Immediately the road was consumed by the beach and our tires were wading through deep sand. Two cars ahead of us looked stuck so I kept the speed up, as directed in a verbal driving lesson from Steve a few days before. We drove onto the ferry straight off the sand.

The deckhand was very friendly so I took the chance to talk ManStuff with him. “I’ll lower the tire pressure for the sand, right, down to about 18 or 20 PSI, yeh?”

“Twenty”, he said with conviction. I took a mental note, then asked, “So, you recommend a good spot for letting the tires down on the island?”

“What? Just do it on the beach when we land”.

I was trying hard to sound knowledgeable while thanking the heavens that I hadn’t stuck to my original plan of trying to deal with the tires while still on the ferry. I couldn’t maintain the pretence any longer, “Yeh, yeh, on the beach, I was thinking that. So, errrm, how do you let the air out?”

Anyway, it wasn’t hard to bring the tires down, it took that most universal method of ManFixing, that of just poking it with a key. Soon we were driving, gingerly at first, along the hard sand which is only exposed at low tide. The ferry had dropped us at the southern tip of the island and we were heading north along the eastern shore. It is a long, narrow island that stands a few hundred metres from the mainland at its southern end and leans out to sea as one moves towards its northern tip about 100Kms away. It is the largest sand island in the world, essentially just a pair of hundred-kilometre beaches with forest and lakes on the higher ground in the centre. Besides a few resorts and basic services, it is essentially untouched. There simply aren’t any roads, just a handful of tracks for accessing the resorts and some of the natural features inland. Thus Fraser Island has evolved into an off-roader’s paradise. The Environment Protection Authority has designated basic strips of land sheltered behind the dunes on the land side of the beach. For $5 each per day we purchased a license to camp at these sites, talk about a bargain.

On the first night we ducked into the first available campsite and pitched swiftly ahead of the failing light. The sand offered a soft bed under our tent, amidst a pretty circle of bushes full of cicadas. We discovered, to our amateurish shame, that neither of our torches were functional so we sat under the light in the car reading to each other until late. We were startled by a tapping on the window. Two robots were standing by the car. No, wait, robots? It was two teenage boys wearing luminous bands all over themselves so they wouldn’t get lost in the pitch darkness.

“Excuse me”, one of the boys said, “Could you walk us back to our campsite? We’re being followed by dingoes”. I rose confidently to the challenge, puffed my chest and strode back with them. Barely visible in the shadows, a small dog was lurking nearby but it hardly looked threatening. Then another betrayed its presence by rustling some leaves on the other side of us. Ah, they’re just dogs, I thought, and returned to the tent without trouble. But late in the night I rose for a pee and was overcome by paranoia, I felt stupid. I heard a noise but dismissed it. Then another noise and a sense of movement nearby. Okay, I thought, there’s a dingo just over there but so what? It’s just a dog. Then it ran straight at me and stopped at my feet. I tried to be tough by loudly shooing it away and clapping my hands but it barely noticed me. It eventually sidled off. I was, I admit, more scared than I can ever remember before then. I actually had half-waking nightmares that night about our tent being ambushed and our legs being eaten.

Early the next morning we turned inland and had our first experience of some decent off-roading. For about an hour we bounced down a sand track in low gear. I tried to keep the wheel running in the existing ruts made by previous cars. Occasionally the car would pop out of the ruts and I would steer it back in. The car would slip down and the back end would wriggle until we ran true in the ruts again. Twice I found myself staring at the bonnet as we lunged up the back on the side of the track. Each time a tree loomed in front of us but I would already have the steering full over so the chunky tires would eventually bite and throw us back onto the track.

We stopped near the centre of the island at Lake Mackenzie, the biggest of Fraser Island’s unique “perched” lakes. Stepping from the car Emma realised that she’d left her sandals back at the campsite, tempting the thieving dingoes. But the tide was nearly up so had been cut off and wouldn’t be able to retrieve her sandals for a few hours even if they were still there. We carried on without Emma’s only footwear. The lake was beautiful in an extraordinary way. A bone white sand beach slopes down into the clearest water we’d ever seen. Floating face-down with our snorkels and face-masks the eery thing was that the water was so featureless. There is nothing, no fish, no shells, no debris, just the ramp of white sand which abruptly turns into an abyssal blackness towards the deep centre of the lake.

Leaving Lake Mackenzie at the end of the morning the car park was overflowing and the lake foreshore was beginning to fill with people, which would have tempered the tranquillity we had felt there if we had arrived later than we did. Just down the road, however, the lesser-known Lake Birrabeen had only a handful of people strewn across its broad shore. The sand was broken by patches of reeds, making it more attractive, and the bath-warm water was so shallow that we could lie down half in and half out of it. That peaceful, accessible lake was reminiscent of the kind of dreams one has when one is very, very happy in life.

After Lake Birrabeen we endeavoured down a long off-road stretch. The inland loop took a good chunk of the day with infrequent stopping and we didn’t see another car the whole time. Deep sand at first soon hardened to a faster surface knobbled by tree roots, branches and leaves. Occasionally the track would soften for a short bumpy section, where the roots were more exposed. With every new challenge my confidence and our speed increased until we were rattling along far inland in fourth gear.

We found Emma’s sandals unmoved and uneaten. Then we hit the beach again to make our way further up the island. The tide was falling now but gave us little hard sand on which to get our speed up at first. Beach driving is utterly different to the inland tracks. A steady but strung-out stream of 4x4s flies along the fringe of a high, violent sea. From behind the wheel the experience is mesmerising. There is little steering required, just a gentle winding along the line of the shore, as white water breaks on one side and reaches its damp fingers towards you, never quite catching your tires if you’re focused. It’s easy to get complacent but the beach presents one unique danger: washouts. A washout is essentially a stream running across the beach to the water. The water erodes the sand to form small cliffs on either side of its course. Some of the cliffs are a few centimetres high and innocuous, a few are over a metre; virtually all are invisible until the last second because a depressed lip forms on either side, obscuring the approaching threat. People actually die hitting these things sometimes, their vehicles dive into the washout and are pitch-poled over their bonnets. But you learn to spot the signs: a patch of silvery water reflecting off the beach at its lowest point, a sudden swerve in the tire tracks ahead.

The driving on the beach was smooth and swift, close to flying. Co-driver Emma would yell out any possible obstacle or point of interest with arbitrary discretion, “Bump! Washout! Jellyfish! Rock! Bird!” Then, reaching further north, a spectral shape appeared ahead. The T.S.S. Mahano was shipwrecked on the beach three decades ago and still stands, although wind, water, salt and the consumptive course of the years have nibbled the ship down to a twisted half-skeleton. It was eerie and fascinating to look over this dark orange corpse in the rich light of sunset. We camped soon after, alone in a little nook behind a small dune, with fish eagles circling above us and, later, the twinkling heavens. No dingoes disturbed our dreams but we kept a stick ready for them this time.

Riding out early with the tide we ventured to the furthest point north accessible to vehicles. There, at what is known as the Champagne Pools, is one of the only rocky areas of the island. The rocks have formed in a pair of rough circles so as to create sheltered pools for swimming. We lounged in the pools with our snorkelling gear on and swam among hundreds of colourful fish. Waves from the sea break over the rocks and roll down into the Champagne Pools, bubbling-up the water and making it fizz all around one’s ears. In this way too the fish are tossed into the pools and cannot escape on that tide. It is a perfect spot, again like somewhere from a dream. And we were the only people there. On Fraser Island it is the little heavens like Champagne Pools and the lakes that punctuate what is otherwise quite a punishing place. Getting anywhere involves being jiggled about like the toy of an angry child as one battles down the off-road tracks. Shelter is sparse so the vicious glare of the Queensland sun rarely blinks. After two days and nights we were hardening up and becoming quieted by the heat. Poor Emma’s Irish blood was boiling and she became increasingly fractious and defeated. We agreed to make a dash for the mainland, albeit via the scenic route.

After a fast beach run we took another inland track and stopped at the wonderfully entitled Knifeblade Sandblow, a steep, smooth bank of sand cutting, indeed blade-like, through the forest. Clusters of stumps from trees which hved been consumed by the roaming sand poke through, resembling the ribs of some decaying beast. We didn’t take long out of the car to view the sandblow but still the heat was crushing. Emma was growing quieter and both her temper and sense of rationality were withering. At the next stop, Boomerang Lakes, the heat closed in even tighter, stifling us. At the edge of the woods approaching the lakes Emma couldn’t go on so I walked a short way alone, into the open. The lakes turned out to be a reedy swamp. The surrounding trees looked close to death, slowly bleeding crimson sap and dropping desiccated seed pods like leprous skin. Few birds made any noise and those that did sounded unearthly and cautionary, only the cicadas filled the air with their static buzz. Everything took on a hostile air, like some unfriendly alien planet. It was time to escape the sun.

That inland track was the longest off-road run of our time on the island. Emma read a footnote to that section on our map advising only very experienced drivers to attempt it. People get stuck on those tracks for days, no exaggerating. Only two weeks before us, Steve and Millie met a couple who had been stranded on one of the island tracks for two days only a short way from the beach. Emma kept the footnote to herself and I continued pounding our car over the sand wearing a maniac grin. The sparse eucalypt woods changed abruptly to rainforest and quenched us with mercifully cooling shadow. There, high, narrow palm trunks are dominated by 65m-high“satinay trees, straight cylindrical poles which run way up without any branches before fanning out like an umbrella at the very top. The rainforest resembled a hall of pillars supporting a ceiling of draped green cloth.

Coming down through the rainforest, awoken from the hypnosis of the sun, we had only a kilometre or so left before making it back to the beach when my as-yet clean record for not getting bogged into the sand was smashed. I turned onto the top of a downhill section with a steep, maybe 80˚, corner at the bottom. I should have dropped a gear, perhaps gone a little faster, maybe turned a little more smoothly, who knows? The sand took all our speed and suddenly I had no revs to play with. We stopped dead. I dropped to first gear, gave it only the slightest throttle and slowly slipped the clutch. We moved, downwards. Seriously, straight down, as if in an elevator. The engine stalled. I tried repeatedly, even with the vigorous full-lock, left-right working of the steering-wheel Steve had taught me, but no luck. Suddenly the first car we’d seen in around three hours, two cars actually, came into the corner behind us with a lot of speed to make it through. Throwing up a cloud of sand they stopped just shy of our rear end. The drivers and one passenger, all Aussie men, got out and looked us over. Without even a hello one said, “We’re gonna give you a shove. If it works, don’t stop”. With only the strength of their own backs they pushed at our bull-bars and we popped clear and backed up for another go at it. This time we got away, just. We weren’t going to stop to say thank-you or check if they also made it through.

Almost instantly we were in a very different place. We were seated on a shady veranda ordering food and drinks from a resort bar with music TV playing and people getting slowly drunk. Now we could see how other people “do” Fraser Island, with hotel rooms, seafood platters and cold beer. For us the island had a constant edge of inhospitableness that called for hiding in stolen patches of shade, or running with the tide window, or focusing all muscle action on wheel and peddles on some rattling track, or scanning the bush for lurking dingoes. All this was broken by moments of sheer bliss in the company of nature, or easy fast runs up the beach, feeling lawless and soaringly free. And you know what? Every second of it was invigorating. Go there some time, grit your teeth and point the bonnet into harm’s way.

On the final long sprint down the beach to the ferry point we felt happy and comfortable. As if to give us a send-off, 6 oystercatchers in v-formation flew just off our bonnet for the last few hundreds of metres. With the lurching sea behind them and the misty shadow of the mainland further off, it was a spectacular closing scene. Then the ferry captain invited us to join him on the bridge and entertained us with anecdotes for the short crossing before we reset the tires at 40 PSI and returned to the world.

Chapter 2: Four Feet and Four Wheels Back on the Mainland (23 Jan)

After leaving Fraser Island we drove further north up the coast and soon ran out of day. We found a campsite run by a kindly lady from the Channel Islands who directed us to drive into the citrus-smelling gum trees and pitch anywhere on her extensive camping plot. The site was busy with young fruit-pickers from all over the western world, complaining about pay rates and comparing travel stories. It was nice to nosey into their world. I heard one, an Englishman, say to an American, “You’re getting ripped-off, mate”.

The American replied, “Yeh but in two weeks I’ll be in Alice Springs earning the big bucks, doing plumbing”.

Somebody turned the birds back on too. We awoke to the kookaburras doing their ADHD monkey impression, while some other birds made calls like a trumpeter and a penny-whistler drowning at sea. Em somehow mustered a delicious meal with our leftover food and took the wheel for the first time so I could relax in the passenger seat. The gum forest soon disappeared and the land became one of fruit groves of all sorts. Rail tracks criss-crossed the land to serve such prolific fruit farming. We found our way somehow to another perfect swimming spot at Elliot Heads, a channel of warm turquoise water shored on both sides by white sand. The water was impossible to leave but we were done, content, happy to head home even though we had gone so far.

Overhearing a radio interview about the joys for all the family at nearby Noosa, and because it’s called Noosa, we went there on the way back. We arrived on Hastings beach at Noosa, which turned out to be a famous hippy, surfing and rich kids’ hang-out, and treated ourselves to a date. We revelled in good food and a live singer who somehow filled his set with some of my favourite obscure songs, then we embarked on the final run back.

I was back at the wheel. It was a late, tired drive along the main highway, which is poor in features to distract the driver, there aren’t even any corners. But Emma by then had trained her co-driving skills to a commendable level. She tuned the radio to a good station, fed me some trail mix and water, and rubbed my shoulders while prompting me with involved conversation. Life behind the wheel had become, for our little travelling duo, bliss.