Australia

• New Here? No Worries Mate - Beginners Guide
• Daydreamer Believer - Daydream Island, Great Barrier Reef
• Wonders of Wilderness Island - Fraser Island, Great Barrier Reef
• The Lizard of Oz - Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef
• 700-mile hop on Kangeroo Highway - Melbourne to Sydney
• Bush Tucker... without the trial - Outback
• Primeval Pamering - Queensland
• Sydney is Supreme - Sydney
• It's simply the best, Mate! - Sydney
• Continent Please Carol - Top End
• Whirlybird Wine Tours - Victoria

FRASER ISLAND IS A GREAT spit of sand, 78 miles long, at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef.

Its natural wonders include a 75-mile unbroken beach, cliff faces of brilliantly coloured sandstone, dense rainforests, freshwater streams, lakes perched in the dunes, massive sandblows and abundant wildlife.

Given its history, it’s a wonder that any of it survives.

In 1897, a Liverpool-born journalist, E.H. Banfield, escaped the stress of his Sydney newsroom and the tyranny of the deadline and opted instead for life as a beachcomber.

Accompanied by his wife, Banfield explored many of the hundreds of islands scattered over the 80,000 square miles of sea protected within the Great Barrier Reef.

He eventually chose to live just south of Cairns on Dunk Island, which he described as wholly uninhabited, entirely free from traces of ‘the mauling paws of humanity’.

What would he think if he went on that same voyage of exploration today?

He would find that in the intervening 100 years or so the mauling paws of humanity have been hard at work – and he is partly to blame.

Confessions of a Beachcomber

His account of life on Dunk, The Confessions of a Beachcomber, created the romantic image of the coral island’s carefree lifestyle that now draws millions of visitors to the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Banfield must even bear a little responsibility for the Gold Coast, Australia’s most intensively developed.

Even so, the sparkling waters off Queensland are still studded with an astonishing number of islands which bear few scars of modern times.

There are low-lying coral islands and steep, rocky islands. And Fraser Island, drowning in superlatives and totally different.

On the ferry across we caught our first glimpse of Kingfisher Bay Resort, where we were to spend a few days.

It was immediately obvious the buildings harmonised with the landscape, two storeys and never protruding above the tree-line. All paints and finishes blend with natural colours of the bush.

As we spilled out on to the long wooden jetty, I was distracted by a group of children and adults taking a fishing lesson. A young man wearing a green uniform proclaiming him to be a Kingfisher Bay Ranger was demonstrating how to bait a hook to cast.

As the bait struck the water, a fish bit. The children gasped and cheered, the adults applauded as the herring-sized fish was landed.

I have watched anglers all over the world, from the banks of the Serpentine to the shores of the South China Sea, and never seen anyone catch anything. So when the ranger told me Fraser Island is an angler’s paradise I believed him.

From the jetty to the resort is a pleasant stroll on boardwalks and woodchip tracks that criss-cross the dunes and link the different parts of the village. On the way to my room, skirting one of the swimming pools, I noticed what I took to be a yellow dog trotting briskly among the sunbathers. Only when it passed within a few feet did I realise it was a dingo. I put my name down for a pre-breakfast guided walk, which are free and cover bird-watching, bats, frogs, ‘bush tucker’, possum spotting and wildflower recognition.

Jeff, a wildlife enthusiast, is part of a team of rangers who add greatly to the Fraser Island experience. He was quick to fill me in on a little history. Fraser, also called Great Sandy, is the world’s largest sand island and one of Australia’s World Heritage sites.

When Captain Cook sailed past on Endeavour in 1770, he gave names to several geographical features on the island.

But it was to be a further 30 years before the explorer Matthew Flinders actually landed and made first contact with the Butchulla Aboriginal tribe.

Today, Fraser is safe from development that spoilt other parts of Queensland. The northern half of the island is the Great Sandy National Park and the southern half is largely Crown Land administered by the Forest service.

On a nature tour with Tony Charters, almost the first thing he showed me was a stand of satinay. We stopped the 4x4 in a clearing and climbed out to admire the great trees.

The earthy smell of the vegetatation, the mystery that lies among the shadows and the furtive unexplained noises brought back at once the sense of wonder it is impossible not to feel in any rainforest.

On Fraser, there is a difference: the forest is awe-inspiring, but not threatening.

Enchanting Lakes

In Amazonia, the unknowable immensity of the forest is frightening. On Fraser, you know that a few miles down the trail is the ocean or, even better, one of the island’s magnificent, enchanting lakes.

We drove on and within minutes glimpsed Lake McKenzie through the trees, a startling patch of brilliant blue. At about 400ft above sea level, huge freshwater lakes are perched among the dunes.

While they have no attraction for anglers, they are great places for swimming, photography and picnicking.

On the way back we drove along Seventy Five Mile Beach, on the island’s eastern side.

On the western side of the island, migrating humpback whales from Antarctica can be seen in the sheltered waters at certain times of the year. Whale-watching is restricted to licensed boats, but still attracts 50,000 visitors a year.

With few shops and no towns or even villages, Fraser Island is still largely wilderness and the perfect antidote to the excesses of the Gold Coast.

I intend to return, next time with my walking boots.