K'gari

K'gari, known for a century and a half as Fraser Island, is the largest sand island in the world: some 123 km of dunes, forest and lakes off the coast of Queensland, built up over roughly 750,000 years from sand carried north by coastal currents onto a volcanic bedrock base. Its name comes from the language of the Butchulla people, whose creation story tells of a white spirit, K'gari, who loved the land she had helped to make so much that she was turned into it — an island of trees, lakes and creeks to keep her company. The state government restored the name officially in 2023, and the island has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1992.

What astonishes visitors is that a heap of sand can hold rainforest. Tall forests grow in its interior, sustained by fungi in the soil that let plants draw nutrients from nothing but sand, fed by spring-fed creeks that run through most of the island's valleys. The island has more than a hundred freshwater lakes, including some forty perched lakes — lakes held above the water table on a hardened layer of sand and plant matter, about half of all such lakes known on Earth. Lake McKenzie (Boorangoora), with its white silica beach and pale-blue water, is the best known; Lake Boomanjin, tinted red by tannins, is the largest perched lake on any sea island; and Lake Wabby, beside the Hammerstone Sandblow, is the deepest, at about 12 m.

The ocean side is a different world. The so-called 75-Mile Beach runs along most of the east coast and is legally a road, used by four-wheel drives and even as a landing strip for light aircraft. Along it lie the Champagne Pools, the rocky headland of Indian Head, the outflow of Eli Creek and the rusting hull of the Maheno, a former trans-Tasman liner and First World War hospital ship that was driven ashore by a cyclone in 1935 while under tow to the breakers. The island's dingoes are believed to be among the purest in eastern Australia; dogs are banned to keep them that way, and feeding them is prohibited.

Getting there

The nearest town is Hervey Bay, about 39 km from the island's centre, with Hervey Bay Airport (HVB) about 29 km away. Ferries run from River Heads, south of Hervey Bay, to Kingfisher Bay and Wanggoolba Creek, and from Inskip Point, north of Rainbow Beach, to Hook Point at the island's southern tip. The crossing takes around 50 minutes.