KEY POINTS:
As it passed the boy, the dingo licked his hand. Nine-year-old Clinton Gage, camping with his family on Fraser Island, the giant sandbar which hangs off Queensland's Sunshine Coast, was mesmerised by the wild dog. But he was a bit scared, too, because there was more than one dingo. Clinton, who had wandered 75m from the tent site with his brother, turned to run away. The dingoes attacked. The little Brisbane boy never stood a chance.
Fraser's dingoes, one of the purest strains in Australia because they are isolated from domestic dogs, paid heavily. In true Queensland Government-style, hunters were dispatched to nail 30 of the island's pack. New laws were enforced. Rangers in Steve Irwin clobber were handed powers to impose on-the-spot $225 fines for feeding dingoes.
Despite the tragedy of little Clinton Gage, dingoes remain a Fraser drawcard. Few other accessible parts of Australia offer up close and personal encounters with the unpredictable canines. But best keep your distance. The rule on Fraser is look, don't feed and don't touch the shrewd scavengers, which have bandicoots, rats, and rotting fish to dine on.
This is a place which has been misleading visitors for centuries. Captain James Cook landed on Fraser in 1770, thinking it was part of the mainland. He stumbled on a pristine wonderland: a sprawling sand island with a mantle of rainforest and hidden lakes with water so pure that it softens hair and shines jewellery. There were Aborigines too, the Butchulla people, who called the island "K'gari" or "paradise". The Government pushed them off to barren parts of Queensland to make way for loggers and sandminers.
Now the sandminers, too, have gone. The business of Fraser is tourism. A World Heritage site, the island draws 350,000 visitors a year who explore its enchantments on a network of sandy tracks which lace through forests of scribbly gum, brush box and Queensland kauris.
Walking is possible but most who cross the Great Sandy Strait on barges from Inskip Point or further north at Hervey Bay hire 4WDs or join parties on grunty buses. Expect to dig out your vehicle at least once during a visit.
The 120km beach beside the Pacific is a designated highway and you need to watch for foot to the floor types. They risk getting caught by the island's resident cops who level radar guns, issue tickets and bag drunk drivers.
Light aircraft use the beach for tourist flights. A 15-minute spin over the interior costs $A60. From the air, the forests resemble broccoli clumps. Secret lakes are revealed and the sheer vastness of Earth's largest sand island stretches into the distance.
Back on land, anglers cast off Fraser's eastern shore, where whales pass a few hundred metres away and tiger sharks lurk in the shallows. Look up and you might see birds of prey. Osprey and sea eagles - just two of Fraser's 354 recorded species, half of Australia's total - glide on thermals above the coast, searching for fish remains.
Before leaving the beach the wreck of the Maheno is worth inspecting. A rusting hulk is all that remains of the once-fastest ship on the Tasman. Used by New Zealand as a hospital ship in World War I, the ship was caught in a winter cyclone in 1935 while being towed to Japan for scrap. During World War II, RAAF bombers used the Maheno for target practice. It is just one of many wrecks, the waters around Fraser Island claiming 23 ships between 1856 and 1935.
In fact the island got its name from shipwreck victim Eliza Fraser, a Scot whose ship hit a reef in 1836. She was captured by Aborigines, her husband James was speared and survivors stripped of their clothing. Eliza was found eventually by an escaped convict who had lived for six years with the Aborigines, and is said to have gone naked to get their confidence.
Eliza went on the lecture circuit, retailing her story with more and more graphic detail, giving the island 19th-century notoriety and a name.
Fraser's real splendours lie inland. Tracks pass towering satinay trees, once heavily harvested for their salt-water resistance. Satinays were logged to line the Suez Canal.
Glimpses of massive sandblows appear through the forest. These are expanding tongues of sand, fed by the inexhaustible supply of grains blowing up Australia's coast to strike Fraser's highest ridges. The blows creep over the forest by a metre a year, drowning everything in their path.
One trail leads to Central Station, an old logging camp, lying dappled beneath the rainforest canopy. A boardwalk passes the crystal clear Wanggoolba Creek to a cluster of king ferns, a prehistoric plant with the world's largest single fronds and used as backdrop for a BBC programme on dinosaurs. Taste the water and marvel that Evian hasn't bottled it.
A few kilometres on lies Lake McKenzie, a perched lake formed above the water table in a shallow depression with an impervious floor of forest litter and sand. McKenzie has shimmering blue waters with white sandy beaches. It is a perfect spot for a dip and a picnic and - from an arm's length - a bit of dingo-spotting.
* Andrew Stone's visit was assisted by Cooloola Regional Development Bureau and Tourism Sunshine Coast.
