Our plan was to reach perhaps the most popular attraction on the drive up to Cairns listed by Unesco as World Heritage Site and being the world largest sand island, you know already what I am talking about: it’s Fraser Island.

This much acclaimed land is sculpted by sand, wind, with crystalline freshwater lakes (like the intense blue waters of McKenzie Lake framed by nearly pure silica sand being the highlight), giant dunes and lush rainforest opening on the long Seventy-Five Mile beach where dingoes roam wildly.

There are only three launching points to access this remote but paradoxically so close place only separated to the mainland by a narrow strait: Inskip Point, River Head and Hervey Bay, this last one is also the most touristy gateway. Inskip Point happened to be the first on our route, after deviated from the Bruce Hwy at Gimpie, so we decided to detour and checked it out.

Being a protected sand island means there are now roads at all and therefore it’s only accessible with 4X4s. Our junky van would for sure get bogged even before getting to the barge (small ferry) to Fraser Island so we were restricted either to rent one, go on a self-drive tour (the most popular a 2 nights camp trip with 9 fellow dudes) or buy a package trip on a chunky-tyres bus with 28 others, not quite my idea of fun.

Discarded the last two options, mainly cause we wanted to have the freedom to discovery Fraser Island on our own way, we got down to the numbers to see if we could afford or not to hire a 4WD.

Unfortunately for us, math is not an opinion:

vehicle Entrance permit from QPWS $38.25 for a month (that’s the minimum)

+ camping permit $5 pn each (so cheap!)

+ barge from Inskip Point $90 return for a 10 mins cross (or returning via Hervey Bay $115)

+ rental of the 4x4 around $130 per day (ouch)

+ pricey fuel on the island

+ maybe insurance?

= maybe next time!

For a two days trip this was not my plan to hard pinching the pennies! But I didn’t discourage, yet.

By looking at the map provided by the QPWS office at Rainbow Beach, I started drumming it into my head that we could just hike to Mckenzie Lake, which interested me at most.

Some locals even advised us we could also hitch up a free ride to the other side of the channel being a popular fishing route. The only tiny detail that hold us back was the circa 10 (maybe 11 hours) track we would had dare as amateur walkers packed with all the camping gear need it for the night, food supplies, probably at least 5 lt of water, if not even more, each and the heat of the tropical sun... umm now I was discouraged!!

Although this would be for sure the best way to escape the traffic of the congested beach and to experience this enigmatic island through its natural interior, for the time being we would just take it easy in pretty Rainbow Beach. We could always thinking about it in few weeks time once on our way back to Sydney.

The 90km walking track runs around the island but it's break up into short sections.

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