We were disappointed to wake up to rain this morning, especially since we were on our way to Fraser Island, a World Heritage site, and recommended by Trevor who'd visited the island in 2004.
It is the largest sand island in the world and the only one that has a rainforest surviving in this strange and sometimes harsh environment.
It is also home to the purest of all dingoes, wild dogs that were brought here by the Asians thousands of years ago, long before Capt Cook claimed Australia for the British Empire.
They are considered the purest because of their lack of breeding with domestic and feral dogs.
The ferry crossing from River Heads was a comfy 45 minutes, the ocean calm and beautiful.
Once checked in, we visited a gallery of photographs taken by resident ranger, interpreter of nature and photographer, Peter Meyer, that whet our appetites to explore some on our own.
As soon as there was a break in the rain we were off, Nev probably not as enthusiastically as I!!
We headed to McKenzie's Jetty, which was built to accommodate the logging trade on the island back in the day, and now provides fabulous photo ops at sunrise and sunset.
As we made our way down to the beach from the lush forest we'd walked thro, I spotted a dingo and we were so excited to watch him make his way toward us and drink from a fresh spring emptying onto the beach!!
Dingo!
Our own sighting, far from the madding crowd...
this island is 150km long and 15km wide and is very popular, accommodating many people in hotels and campgrounds and villas...
We stood in awe
quite tickled pink, really, at our luck,
and then he ambled off,
so we did too.
The rain began to fall gently on us as we made our way back along the beach
but we didn't care
we'd seen a dingo in the wild!!
Woohoo!!
Now to hear one howl...
PS this is not the best pic - need to download close-ups off my big camera..