Fraser Island is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. The world's largest sand island, it stretches for 120 kilometers along the Queensland coast east of Hervey Bay and north of the Sunshine Coast. The interior is hilly terrain, blanketed with dense rainforest and dotted with freshwater lakes of all sizes. The sunlight streams through the canopy of tall trees down to the ferns and bracken of the damp forest floor, and clear freshwater creeks run along fine sandy beds to the ocean. Fine beaches and sand dunes line the coast for endless miles, backed by waving palms trees and deep bush. Everywhere the ground is fine light sand, somehow providing support for the tall trees and storing freshwater just six feet below the surface.
The island is named for Eliza Fraser, a shipwreck victim who lived among Aborigines on the island for two months until her rescue in 1836. A few decades later timber loggers moved onto the island and drove the Aborigines out. Satinay, a rainforest tree found mostly on the island, is resistant to marine borers, and was used to build the Suez Canal. Sand mining stopped in the 1970s and logging in the early 1990s. In 1993 the island was declared a World Heritage site, and today it is a wonderful destination for fishermen, hikers, and campers.
We headed for Fraser Island in our own version of a shipwreck, a tiny rented four-wheel drive Suzuki which I was to despise for the next five days. This little junker had gaping holes in the seats, tangles of dessicated wiring hanging from the instrument pod, no functioning heater or defroster, and rust breaking through all over its cheap respray. On the highway heat radiated up from its suspect floorboards and we left a trail of unidentified bangs and rattles from somewhere under our seats. Worse yet, it had a tiny but loud little beehive of a motor, which was identified by the inevitable tow service -- more about that later -- as a 800 cc two-stroke, and no discernible shock absorbers. It wandered around the road and bumpy curves usually triggered a frightening oscillating yaw. When it rained, which it did almost continuously on our drive, water splattered up from the holes in the floorboards and sprayed in through the windows which, due to the lack of defrosting, were by necessity all wide open. 
Fraser Island can be reached by barge from the smaller town of Rainbow Beach, close by the southern tip of the island. We were later told that the beach got its name from the many-hued sand, but as we puzzled along kilometer after kilometer of unmarked forest track looking for the infrequent direction signs, as if on some sort of desperate scavenger hunt, we decided the name referred to the end of the rainbow that lies always over the next hill. When we finally reached the town, well after dark, we quickly abandoned all thought of camping and eagerly checked into the Rainbow Sands Motel (a fine place, fortunately.)
As I checked our vehicle over the next morning, I was struck by the fact that all the lights and wipers had failed. This turned out to be a blown fuse, and so it was off to the local store (fishing tackle, bait, camping supplies, canned food, and auto parts) for a set of fuses. Then we puzzled over the utility of a jack without any accompanying lug wrench, and it was back to the store for a metric wheelbrace. A few more trips for some last-minute camping things, a tour around town to photograph the healthy population of old Land-Rovers, and we headed to Inskipp Point and the island barge.
When our wheels touched the beach on Fraser Island, we discovered that our ugly little tinpot had barely enough oomph to plow through the soft sand, and since the tide was coming in and the strip of firm smooth sand disappearing we found a track into the island's interior, hoping to make our way up to Eurong Village, a beach resort about a third of the way up the island's east coast.
Part of this path went over sharply washboarded road and the crumbling, potholed remnants of old macadam, and somewhere before Dilli Village the muffler came lose from the exhaust pipe. A quick look confirmed that most of the exhaust mounts were long rusted away and the cobby weld to the exhaust pipe, that was the only attachment for the muffler, had fractured through. So we continued on with the little two-stroke blatting and backfiring loudly. We met some other 4x4's (mostly Toyota Land Cruisers with tall tires and snorkels) and were passed by some giant four and six-wheel drive diesel trucks that looked like disguised construction equipment, but when we turned off into the forest we were all alone. 
It must have been the exhaust noise that gave us away. The dark clouds, which had been thrown off our trail by the sneaky detour through down logging roads into Rainbow Beach, found us again and as we climbed the narrow, sandy tracks into the interior, the familiar rain began to patter down. Soon the patter turned into steady hard rain and the sand tracks became small rivers of brown water rushing down canals of deeply rutted sand. The Suzuki began to run worse and worse, struggling up the uphill tracks, even in first low with locked hubs. Every kilometer or so the engine threatened to die, and we had to select neutral and sit motionless, revving the engine until it would run freely again. The track was quite flooded by now, with large deep pools collecting in the low spots, and if we went in too slow the Suzuki would bog badly and barely make it to the other side. When we went in faster, the engine would get soaked. At the far end of one pool I ended up drying out the distributor and restarting the stalled engine (with the rain at its hardest, naturally.) This turned out to be a useful interruption, since we discovered that the distributor contact points were all corroded and the plug wires were so loose that one had fallen off, making our 800 ccs only 600. Fixing that and taping some ziplock bags over the distributor helped a little, but not much and as darkness approached we were finally halted by a particularly long and deep section of flooded track. Wading revealed soft, boggy, deeply rutted sand under thigh-deep water. We had passed the halfway mark on our fuel tank back at Lake Boomanjin, and the only accessible fuel pumps were at Eurong Beach so going back was not an option and it was clear that we would be camping in the forest that night. As we would have read in the Lonely Planet guide, if we had thought to check it, "rain and storms can make beaches and tracks very heavy going, if not impassable."
I've had better camping experiences. I do not believe the tent floor or rainfly actually leaked, but it was hard to tell since the rain, mist, and humidity quickly made everything we had damp and squishy, including our already soaked clothes, our formerly dry replacement clothes, and our sleeping bags. Despite all the weather, there was no breeze, and inside my zipped-up tent the dripping air was hot, still, and stifling. I tried standing outside, preferring drowning over suffocation, but the forest seemed to breed some sort of waterproof flying insect and the rain washed off my insect repellent as quickly as I could put it on, so that was not a permanent solution. Thus the night passed very, very slowly as we laid on our wet, clumped-up sleeping bags, watching condensation run down the tent wall and pool on the slimy tent floor.
The next morning the rain had stopped but the tracks were still flooded. Cautious wading showed that our nemesis had dropped by about a foot, and was now only calf-deep in the high spots but still over my knees in the deep soft ruts. Lured by visions of escaping the dank forest to the sunny beaches at Eurong, we decided to try getting through. Afraid of hanging the little Suzuki up in canyon-sized ruts made by some huge six-wheel drive diesel tractor truck, I tried to skirt the side of the pool to keep the tires on the high lines and out of the ruts. A good plan, perhaps, but it was marred by a particularly incompetent bit of driving and as we entered the deepest part, the surface of the pool rose up and flowed in the drivers' window as all the trees slowly turned horizontal and I fumbled around in the muddy water looking for the ignition key to shut off the engine. I never found it, but the engine gurgled and shut off anyway and I found myself sitting up through the passenger side window, looking down on our possessions floating in the truck and wondering if I should have steered quite so close to the bank after all.
Shortly after we offloaded our sodden bags and unbuckled Kathryn from her car seat (where she had slept very peacefully through the whole episode, being fortunately on the uphill side and thus dry), two truckloads of backpackers came along, righted our little skateboard, and pushed it out of the water. In Eurong I found a tow service, who pulled the Suzuki behind their truck until it started again, and we gratefully checked into the Eurong Beach Resort Hotel (room no. 13) for two days of drying out and inspecting the remains.
The Suzuki was undamaged, although it took three days for the driver's door to drain all the water and four days before the instrument pod was unfogged. My sleeping bag was a heavy ball of sodden down and filthy nylon. Our laptop computer was completely inert and, when I unscrewed the access panels over the CPU, water ran out, but, in what I classify as a minor miracle, after 24 hours of drying out under the ceiling fan it booted up normally and has been fine ever since. Our clothes were soaked through and dirty. But ziplock freezer bags, and luck, kept all our cameras and lenses dry and -- most important -- saved my HP200LX palmtop. In the end the only losses were one Discman and a book or two.
Eurong Beach was delightfully different from the rainforest. The cool ocean breeze kept us comfortable in the intense sun, the bar accepted credit cards and did not require shoes, Kathryn enjoyed riding on our shoulders in the swimming pool, and the beach was incredible. Flat, smooth, white sand, crashing surf, a deep blue sky, pure white clouds, and it went on forever and ever. I had seen equally beautiful beaches in California, but none that continued without end like this one.
"Resort" was a bit grand of a name for the place, but there was a general store, gas pumps, rooms for let, a small swimming pool, and food and drink. In general the Eurong Beach Resort reminded me of some places in Baja. The most exciting discovery was that although I was very low on Australian currency the bar would let me run a tab on my credit card. The hitch was the $A20 minimum charge, which, at $A2.05 a beer and with my new mates buying every other round, lasted a long time. The jukebox played "Stairway to Heaven" at least three times during our drinking. I am sure of it.
My bar buddy was Quentin, a bearded ex-soldier who now taught boat-handling skills to sailors. He explained that AIDS was the result of a secret American military biological warfare program, while I explained that AIDS actually came from contaminated experimental polio vaccines that had been illegally tested in Africa. With the clarity of thought of the sociably drunk, we agreed that both stories were undoubtedly true and that obviously the polio vaccine was also a secret U.S. Army military experiment. I also heard the exclamation "Fair Dinkum!" a lot and I think, from context, that it means something like "You Don't Say!". But it could mean "Get Stuffed!", for all I know. Quentin was leading a group of people in a tour of the island. More than half of his group were women and he was hoping to for some sex, but as most of them were lesbians he was rather downcast about his chances. Somewhere during the evening Quentin gave me the most useful bit of information I had to date picked up in an Down Under bar: there is no tipping in Australia. Our bartender added that servers are pretty well paid and do not depend on tips for their livelihood: a bartender usually makes $A16/hour (about $US12.50) and a waiter $A14. Elsewhere in Australia my cabbies had refused tips and sometimes even rounded fares down to the nearest dollar.
As we drank, we played the universal evening pastime in Eurong: swatting flies. There was one notable sort of fly, a huge green and brown variety that came out for a few hours in the evening. They would bite you right through your clothes and often drew blood. Fortunately they were rather slow and stupid, and as the evening continued I noticed most of the patrons had collected a little pile of dead flies at their feet. Since I knew that flies can only take off backwards, I held my own in this local sport. The real trick was to swat them with a glancing blow that would kill them but not cause their bodies to squish disgustingly on your fingers. I think I could be good at it with a little more practice. The insect to really watch for, I was told, is a type of mosquito with black and white bands (football socks) on his legs, as the "footballers" often carry the Ross River fever which, from all accounts, is not to be trifled with. We used a lot of insect repellent on the island.
The island dingos hung around the resort, too, looking for unattended scraps or small children (but don't feed them either, it is not good for them.) They were handsome, smooth-bodied reddish dogs with upright ears and intelligent eyes. Someone told me that a dingo puppy adopted by people grows up like a regular dog, and others told me they stayed wild, so I don't know, but they were certainly more attractive than the skulking coyotes I've seen prowling neighborhoods in Southern California.
After our stay in sunny Eurong we left the island, driving along the beach this time rather than the interior tracks. At low tide the beach served as a natural highway, with everything from taxis (four-wheel drive Toyotas) to campervans and hire cars (again, Landcruisers or Land Rovers) and delivery trucks (usually big six-by-sixes: there are simply no two-wheel drive vehicles on the island) cruising along the sand. The hateful little Suzuki was loud as ever, with the muffler still bouncing uselessly between the frame and axle despite our best efforts with the duct tape, but with the dry weather, firm sand, and the advice the tow service guys had told me (don't torque it like a Land Rover, instead boot the hell out of it and keep the revs high to avoid fouling plugs) we got back to the barge without much trouble and headed back to Brisbane (where it was raining again, naturally) with a heap of moldy clothes for washing. 
Traveling On a Budget: Camping on Fraser Island can be a budget way to pass some time, as long as you don't overturn your hire car and escape to the closest beach resort to run up a big bar tab. The required permit to bring a car on the island, and camping fees, cost us $A59 ($US46) and a go-and-return trip on the barge for a single vehicle $A50 ($US39.) There are many public campgrounds around the island, and in many stretches of beach and forest bush camping is allowed.
Four-wheel drive trucks can be hired in Rainbow Beach or Hervey Bay (the other main gateway to Fraser Island) for $A90/day ($US70) for a little Suzuki up to $A150/day ($US117) for a serious diesel-engined snorkel-equipped long-wheelbase Land Cruiser. Fraser Isand 4x4 Safaris in Rainbow Beach also hires genuine LWB Land Rovers for $A80-90/day. There are also many hire places in Brisbane and if you want to find the worst possible hire Suzuki in all of Queensland, just contact me.
Should you happen into a bar, it can be useful to remember that cans of beer are "tinnies", bottles are "stubbies" (none of these allowed on the island), and a 10-oz. glass of draft beer is a "pot". Pots are usually around $A2.00 ($US1.55) while stubbies and tinnies can run 60 cents or so more. There is not a lot of ale or dark beer around. I usually drank something called "XXXX" (Four-X), usually available on tap, which Quentin claimed was 5% alcohol and thus better value for the money. Save yourself 15% by not tipping, and appreciate that the barman is being friendly because he wants to be, not out of hope for some small change.
Staying Connected: In the Rainbow Sands we confirmed that the in-room phones in most modern Australia hotels use a U.S.-standard RJ-11 modular jack, so you can just unplug the line from the phone and plug it into your modem. The Aussie dial tone won't be recognized by a U.S. modem (it sounds like a continuous phone ring), so you'll add "X1" (dial without waiting for dial tone) to your modem init string and/or dialling string. You may have to use pulse dialing in some places (use "D" or "DP", instead of "DT" in your dialing string.) And "," (pause) may be needed to give the hotel phone time to connect to an outside line. So, for example your dialling string might be "AT X1D 0,,3821 7722". So far we have found room telephone charges. in the budget motels we used to be reasonable: e.g., $A0.60 ($US0.47) for a local call of any duration rather than the $A0.40 charged at the pay phone.
As for rescuing electronic gear from a dunking, my limited experience suggests that you should remove the batteries, switch off all power, open all the covers and ports, position the equipment on its side or back for draining, leave it in a breeze or under a fan (but not direct sun) for 24 hours, and hope for the best. I would avoid plugging in to power until the innards are dry. Better to keep your wheels on the ground in the first place, though.
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