TEN DAYS Exploring The World's Largest Sand Island! Fraser/K'Gari - Jeep Gladiator Around Australia

Welcome back everyone to another episode of The Road Shows Me. My name's Dan and today we are ripping along on the ferry. We're heading over to Fraser Island, recently renamed Goorie, which not surprisingly translates to paradise. So this is the world's biggest sand island. This is some of Australia's most iconic four-wheel driving. We've got tons of sand driving coming up. I expect we're going to get the jeep stuck and not only do we have the jeep, my uncle Ron in the Hilux is coming along to the adventure. This is why I came to Australia. This one I am really excited magical part about Fraser Island is driving on the beach and all of that. Before we can get there though we have to be inland and we come to one of the wonders of Fraser Island. This is called Lake Mackenzie and you can see the stunning white sand that is the shoreline and then the crystal clear water. So this thing is fed entirely by rainwater. There's no rivers here because this is just a sand island and so it's full of rainwater. It's crystal clear and it's up to 14 meters deep, which is like 60 feet or something. So this is a really spectacular white sand lake in the middle of Fraser Island and it's really special because you can swim in this whereas you don't really want to swim in the ocean here because of sharks and because of really dangerous ocean currents and waves and all of that. With any luck we'll show you some of the sharks later on but this is the stunning beach that we've just driven to. Pretty nice place to jump out and stretch the legs. Katie's keen to go for a swim because she's Canadian and that's what Canadians do when they get to cold water versus I'm turning back into an Australian. I might just walk in up to my knees. So here we are guys camping on the beach on Fraser Island and check it out look who we've bumped into. This is grizzly and bear overland. These guys are legends. So Katie and Steph behind me hanging out having a chat. Lee's running around trying to organize something off Uncle Ron. I don't even know what we're doing right now but check it out this is their Defender 130. So if you don't know Lee and Steph from Grizzly and Bear, they drove this thing from France all the way across all the stands all of Central Asia, all of Russia, shipped it down to South Korea then across to Japan then to Taiwan now they're in Australia. They've got more global adventures planned. This is the real deal. This is such an epic expedition. The vehicle's rad but of course Lee and Steph are really cool to hang out with. You can tell I'm just grinning like an idiot chatting to other world adventurers. This is what it's all about and we're trying to hook up for a future adventure. Let's see what happens. For now though we're just going to enjoy. Sunset's about to roll on. You can tell by the smile on my face something good is going on. We've just driven over to the west side of Fraser Island. I've never seen this before and have a look. We have found White Sand Paradise. There's Ron and Katie. There's a sailboat in the background. So we now just are going to find somewhere to camp. And this is us for a couple of nights. We booked over here on the west side and so Ron's having a look at what the fishing options are. We're obviously looking at what the camping options are. This now starts to feel like we're in proper paradise. Remember too it's winter right now. This is as cold as it gets and it is hot. I'm looking at going for a swim. So yeah this is now I feel like we've arrived in tropical Australia. Let's go drive down the beach and see what else we can find. See if we find a really good campsite or a river to fish or something can see sunset over the beach is some kind of spectacular. And it turns out Uncle Ron is a hunter and that's kind of what got me into hunting and fishing and all that outdoorsy stuff. And so Ron tell us what we got for dinner tonight. Well that's a great eel and over here we have an Australian black duck. And so you hunted these yourself? Yeah in Victoria. We're now in Queensland and you know the hunting Queensland as such but these birds come from Victoria. So they're frozen and brought up half plucked and cleaned and just a matter of prepping them and cooking them up. One's a bigger bird than the other of course but that's just the way it is. Looks delicious to me Thanks Ron. So we're going to throw them in a stew, some potatoes, some carrots, some onions. We don't really know how it's going to work out but let's see. In the meantime, sunset. So Uncle Ron and I have just come out for a fishing mission. Here we are we're still on the west side of Fraser Island and tell me what, is this paradise or am I just daydreaming right now? This place is utterly incredible. Pure white sand, kind of tidal. We think this is a river. Ron is pretty excited. He really wants to catch a flathead. So we'll see what happens. He's already out there throwing his line around while I'm here talking to you guys. So I better put my fishing rod together and I'll be sure to show you what we catch, if we catch. So Uncle Ron and I were told there were jacks, mangrove jacks and this is our fishing gear. Uncle Ron just lost one of his songs and had to swim to get it. I found a coconut, we haven't caught any mangrove jacks. What are we doing? We're up to our knees in the mud and then someone said there might be crops in here. I'm losing it. Let's go. Yeah, good luck. I tried. Hey everybody, so we're just about to do a hike up to the Wangal Sand Blow. We'll show you a bit of what that's like after but we thought this was really interesting. So we're in a campground and it's actually completely fenced. So you can see there's this dingo proof fence that goes all around the campground and you might also notice the somewhat ominous sign reminding you to stay with your children and always be dingo safe because Fraser Island actually has tons of dingoes living all over it. It's one of the purest lineages of dingoes that exist in the world because we are on an island and they are very tame. We've seen them every single day coming up to vehicles and stuff like that but what we thought was really interesting is they've also provided us with these lovely be dingo safe walking sticks. So walking groups and carry a stick and this is just a lovely little piece of pvc orange piping and you know it bends and there you go. So I guess no instruction on if we're supposed to hit the dingo or use it to keep the dingoes away from us but very kindly provided. Thank you Queensland Parks. So here we are headed towards the northern part of the island and this is called Nangala Rocks. This is one of the most famous four-wheel driving obstacles in all of Australia and so you can see behind me there there's a really committing kind of rock, I don't know, gully thing whatever you want to call it. I just walked the length of it and there's like diff bashing boulders there's a kid on the other side who's just smashed his lower control arm right off, tore a tyre off a rim, the rim's all bent up. Doesn't really appeal to me. I don't need to do that kind of thing if it isn't actually necessary but so there is a bypass at low tide we would be able to drive up that's section of the beach then come up onto what I'm standing on now and what I'm standing on now looks like this and it's really funny to see this in real life because I have seen numerous videos and photos online where there are just like 10 four-wheel drives in a row stuck right here in this this is really really soft stand and it's actually uphill as well so I'm walking uphill right now in this direction heading north and so this is they say more four-wheel drives have been stuck in this exact spot in Australia than all the rest of Australia put together so this is the thing right now even walking in the tyre tracks I'm in the grooves this is still really soft sand I can feel my feet sinking down this is softer sand than I encountered in the Simpson or you know kind of maybe similar to the road beach run in places so we've been ripping around the island so far at about 22 psi I feel like for this I need to go down quite a bit more so maybe I'll go to 15 and see how that goes and see if we can drive up through here might have to try and convince Uncle Ron that this isn't a stupid idea he definitely doesn't want to drive the committing rock line down there which I don't really need to either it looks like it's full of salt water and rather not get the gladiator covered in salt water so for now I'm going to keep walking keep having a good look at how long and how committing this big sand section is seems to me with the right tyre pressures we should just be able to drive this without an issue isn't much to winch off of but we do have the two of us and downhill that way so you can probably always reverse it and get out of it but I want to see what's at the far end and again now here I am at the end and I recognize this as another super famous spot obviously to get off the beach you have to charge up this and again this sand is soft and that's actually quite a steep climb right there so I can totally understand why so many four-wheel drives get stuck here and you know that's your only way to get back if you go up to the northern end of the island so I have to chat to Uncle Ron make sure that he's on board with it but I think with low enough tyre pressures we're not gonna have a problem Ron's tyres aren't the greatest so let's go and find out so this is the rocks proper Nungala rocks you can see the consequences here these guys have smashed a lower control arm torn a tyre off the rim the rim's not even round anymore so on the other side as well there's a group they've got a burnt out clutch and there's like two vehicles trying to tow it through the sand right now it's a bit of a gong show but I guess this is Nungala rocks and I thought I'd show you this is the entrance to the rocks themselves so we'll just walk the line here obviously you're locked in this is easy this is easy we can just talk to a guy who drove it and he said it was no problem but obviously you can see where all these dips are just grinding out they're smacking into these rocks and so you just have to pick your line I suppose find a way to keep your dips up out of these rocks and then in theory this is probably salt water which isn't great to drive through and there's sort of some rocks in here that are in the middle that are going to get your dips and so I don't actually know how deep it is and you can see a rock there in the middle so this is you know Nungala rocks committing you're in this trench and you're just smacking your dips and smacking your lower control arms and stuff this doesn't really appeal to me I don't need to do that so the line it looks like is down and around we can go under this stuff if we wait till low tide basically we can just sneak below the rocks here and so we'll just wait another maybe hour or so the tide's on its way out we've given ourselves tons of time with the tides so we'll just wait a while sneak under then attack the sand problem just got to convince Uncle Ron hello youtube land I got nominated as the camera person because I have the best friend so I'm excited about that you can definitely see there's a storm actually the weather looks like it's getting better so this might not actually be the worst part of the deal anyway let's go see what that hey dad I'm calling you mate we need your muddy max tracks okay I'll come back to you with them okay there we go yeah she didn't quite pull up here her bowl is just spinning and yeah no traction so we're gonna try lowering the tire pressures and probably get some max tracks on the go Dan made a turn did somebody say babe watch keep running keep running Dan you got this you got bogged on Fraser Island I did got bogged on Fraser Island probably not the first time so the good news is there's still no sign of Uncle Ron the bad news is it's a very far walk and I've been left unsupervised with a gopro so something cool I learned while I was waiting for the boys to decide what we were going to do is that Ningala Rocks is actually closed for six months of the year and it's closed because of the turtle rookery so it's totally one of those spots where turtles crawl up on the beach and lay their eggs which I think is really cool and so you can't actually drive this road during the night for about six months of the year and I just wanted to show you guys this cool please do not disturb them turtles bask on these beaches just a little fun fact for you guys about the turtles can't you just picture cute little turtles living in these caves it's so cute I'm in the cave well that was fun guys yeah it was pretty good hey got bogged got out of it got out of it got out of it so we've made it to the northern tip of Fraser Island and have a look I know I say this a lot but this place is absolutely beautiful sunset is kicking off I can't help myself I just posed the jeep I'm taking a few photos Uncle Ron is right there that's our camping spot for the night he's got his swag set up I'm just out here enjoying the sunset I can't set up the swag yet so already I can tell we did the right thing by you've got to get through Engala rocks you've got to get up here to this campsite right on the northern tip if you ever come to Fraser Island I think this is where it's at this is the the magical spot and so we actually we didn't really know we'd never been here before we booked two nights camping up here and you have to book ahead this place fills up even two weeks ago it was full right around now when we're here so we had so northern tip of Fraser Island get up here hang out have a wonderful time this is amazing Ron and I are going to throw the fishing rods in we got to cook some dinner got to throw the swag out where else do you want to be right now so check it out Ron and I are going for a walk up the beach the sand dune behind us here is incredible feels like we're at the end of the earth and following us along the beach is a sneaky little dingo and it's so funny to look at him because he just feels like a pet dog look at him the way that he walks the way that he looks friendly he wags his tail sometimes it just feels like this is a pet animal that you could pet or like be friends with but you have to remember this is a seriously dangerous wild animal I have no doubt he would tear chunks off me if it came to a fight so although we're this close to him it is not good and it doesn't matter how much we yell at him and try to deter him he doesn't really care he's just so used to people this is what they're like so if you ever did want to see a dingo Fraser on Fraser Island so believe it or not we've actually been here for nine nights we've explored all over this island top to bottom east to west and we've had an incredible time you can see camp behind us there Katie's doing some yoga this morning Ron's packing up he found some rope on the beach that he's gonna keep because that's uncle Ron's style got our swags in the background and these are the kinds of campsites you get on Fraser Island this is just wild up here in the dunes there are no facilities there was no one else camping within many kilometers of us last night so we had all of this to ourselves if you've ever thought about coming to Fraser Island do not hesitate as you've seen this place is utterly incredible so thanks very much for coming along I really hope you've enjoyed it if you have hit that thumbs up button subscribe to the channel we have so many more adventures coming in Australia and if you'd like to go where we're going if you'd like to camp in these same places check out all of our campsites all of our GPS track logs that's just one of the perks I have for you over on my Patreon page for supporters over there so I'll put a link down in the description head over to Patreon you get behind the scenes content you get early access we can have a one-on-one video call to discuss your trip your vehicle whatever it is you're trying to do in the overlanding world you want to come to Australia and have these same adventures that I'm having let's jump on a video call and we'll talk through it and we'll figure out how to make it happen for you all of that over on Patreon right now hit the link go check it out thanks again for watching have fun out there and maybe we'll bump into you on the road