Jake Gordon

A Browne Moon Rise on Fraser Island

12 June 2001

Sunsets - spectacular. Sunrises - not bad. Moonrises - damn weird! Well, got back from Fraser Island yesterday, where I spent a three days and two nights with my Fraser Island buddies - Vicky and Cheryl from good ol’ blighty, Ceylan and Torsten from Germany, and Susan and Chuck from the states - a good bunch of guys to spend the trek with.

You may have heard of Fraser Island in terms of dingoes - some kid got killed by one there a couple of months ago - but it’s far more than just dingoes - and we actually only saw the one whilst we were there, and that was on the very last day when we’d as much as given up looking. Because of the dingo attack, they killed 30 on the island and shoot all the others that come near people with some sort of non-lethal pellet. Well - because of all the fuss, several members of our group shat themselves on several occassions over the prospect of being eaten alive by huge fierce and wild dogs - and instead we were just pissed off when we didn’t see them - even when we camped out on the beach one night, and then in the morning saw loads of dingo footprints inches from our tents!

Where was I? Oh yes - moon rise. Well, T’was a dark and star-lit night as we were camping out on the beach, huddled around our campfire checking ever two seconds for dingoes in the bushes. Then, out of nowhere (actually, it was the sky just above the Pacific Ocean) there was the big red light - looked to me like lots of little red lights, like a boat or something. And, get this, it was the bloody moon. I’d never seen the moon rise before and this was really quite amazing. The moon’s meant to be white/blue, but here, on the horizon, it was a reddy-orange instead - and it really did light up the surroundings a lot - we no longer needed to shine our torches ever few seconds to see if there were any dingoes around.

Anyway, that was the moon rise - now the rest of Fraser Island. It was pretty cool - we travelled around in a 4WD for the three days (which I couldn’t drive ‘cos I’m too young) along dirt tracks and on the beach, stopping at ideallic lakes, gorges, creeks and campsites. Oh, and Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, which meant lots of sand dunes and extremely white lake-beaches (99% silica [the white sand] I’m told).

Oh, and the weirdest part was meeting Steve Browne (old school friend) whilst waiting to board the ferry to get to the island. So we chatted for a bit and should be meeting up in about an hour and a half for a ‘nuff filling Pizza Hut buffet meal (only about two quid). So that was cool.

But what definitely was not cool was my camera breaking - or being broken, because I’ve got no idea what’s wrong with it or when it happened. I noticed it was broken when on the ferry going over to Fraser Island which meant the only photos I got on the island were with my water camera. Not good. I was extremely pissed off and hope like mad that I can get the camera fixed otherwise I’m f#cked.

Talking of which - now, there I was sleeping on the bottom bunk in a dorm when the girl in the bed above me came back with her guy friend. Well, it was about 1am at the time and let’s just say they were a little too amarous on the top bunk for about an hour which kept me awake for a good couple of hours. I mean - please, a little respect for other room-mates please!


Next: Freezing My Nuts Off Previous: Learn To Fly

Other stuff...

by Jake Gordon, some rights reserved