Photo shows an aerial view of Lakes Jennings through to Boomanjin in the central southern part of Fraser Island / K'gari. (not our photo!)

We are back on Sundari and preparing to leave Raby Bay, probably initially at least to swing on our own mooring while we plan our next adventure. We have returned from a whistlestop trip to Bundy to get our rusting anchor galvanised and spend 6 days walking around the Southern Lakes of K'gari / Fraser Island. More about this hike a little later, but we will now address the title of this blog: the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of our gas guzzling camper car, the venerable "Matilda".

We had left Matilda parked just up from the Fraser barge ramp, assuming that was a safe place to leave it. Or not! On our return 6 days later, we were flummoxed to find that Matilda had vanished! Bummer! Had Matilda waltzed away all on its own, or was it due to foul play? Fortunately, especially because Riverheads, the suburb at the mouth of the Mary River where the ferry to Fraser is located, has no public transport link to anywhere else, we have friends in the form of Brian and Jill, ex SV Destiny and SV Maxed Out, who have swallowed the anchor(s) and are residents of the nearby sprawling suburban metropolis of Hervey Bay. Brian picked us up and we were told to stay in their town house as long as we needed to sort ourselves out. Matilda not only was our home away from home in the form of a comfortable bed, and all basic camping stuff, but our computers and a newly galvanised anchor, too, meaning we were facing a substantial loss in uninsured assets.

A trip to the local plods to make a stolen car report was followed by a post on the local community Facebook site. Courtesy of other yachties stranded up in Cairns we had use of their little car, nicknamed "Button". Within a half an hour, a guy called Tony messaged us to say that he had spotted Matilda lounging around near his home. Yay! Things got a little weird when we met up with Tony in an affluent part of Hervey Bay. Matilda had been stripped of just about everything inside, but Tony said he had met up with a woman who had claimed to have bought the car for $800. When she was told that the car was stolen property, she had promptly disappeared. The cops turned up and for once seemed quite human. The car was even subject to fingerprint and DNA forensic analysis. We at least had our wheels back - running around Australia is unfortunately pretty difficult without a car.

Thanks to Brian and Jill for all their help as well as the very sympathetic community on the Facebook site who deluged the thread with helpful comments and support.



Backpacks on again for our 60 km version of the Fraser Island Great Walk

Now for the hike around the Southern dune lakes of K'gari. This is a walk which is hard to do from the boat as leaving it anchored in the Sandy Strait is always a worrying prospect. We have hiked it up to Lake McKenzie a couple of times before, but have always returned the same day.

K'gari has around 40 of these unique perched lakes, isolated freshwater lakes formed by depressions in the sandy floor of the island which have filled up with rainwater. They are all quite stunning, with shallow, clear water surrounded by blindingly white silica sand beaches. The walking tracks link up the lakes and the forest on K'gari, which alternates from wallum heath to Eucalyptus woodland and pockets of rainforest, all rather amazing considering that all this growth takes place on the sandy soil built up by sediment driven north in ocean currents from New South Wales.

We walked to and around 6 of these 40 lakes - Boorangoora (McKenzie), Basin, Jennings, Birrabeen, Benaroon and Boomanjin. Boomanjin was the largest of Fraser's lakes and the largest perched dune lake in the world, while Basin Lake was the smallest we visited.

We did the walk after 3 days of rain and the nights were long and cold in the tent, but the days warm with lovely clear blue skies. We still haven't had the time to see Fraser's wild east coast and the Valley of the Giants - where some of the huge forest giants missed by the early loggers still stand. Maybe another year!



Lake McKenzie - the most commonly visited of the 40 dune lakes on Fraser/K'gari.



Campsite at Lake Benaroon



Misty morning at Lake Benaroon



Wanggoolba Creek crossing at Central Station. The white colour is the sand beneath the crystal clear, but shallow creek



Lake Boomanjin - the world's largest perched dune lake.



Lake Boomanjin again - note the white silica beaches.



Sleepy dingo at the Wanggoolba ferry terminal.




The same dingo decided to inspect our packs while waiting for the ferry.



The ferry arriving at Wanggoolba Creek before the discovery of the missing Matilda.


With much of the Southern hemisphere in winter, the nasty virus has managed to cling on, mutate and make a come back, leaving health officals and politicians scratching their heads as to what to do. We are avoiding crowded places, wear masks when we can't and have had our second booster, but many of our friends or friends or relatives of friends have already had Covid. As some health experts have been saying, ignoring the disease doesn't actually make it go away, but we wish it would!