Jabiru

For the second day of my adventure on Fraser Island, I wanted to get away from the beaches and explore some of the inland tracks.

The day started similarly to the previous day, except when I rolled off the barge today I turned left (instead of right) and rode westwards along the beach.

The high tide was due an hour later today, but I had slept in for half an hour this morning, so I had similar challenges with shrinking beaches of soft wet sand. Unlike yesterday, I didn’t plan to spend much time on the shore.

After about ten minutes I reached Coolooloi Creek. If you didn’t have a 4WD or bike, you could walk on the barge at Inskip then stroll here in about half an hour.

Coolooloi Creek is on the edge of a swamp. In the cool morning it was alive with the chatter of myriads of birds all trying to out-sing one another.

I slowly pedaled inland, grinning manically as I looked up into the trees in an attempt to spot the birds.

Cabbage Tree palms sprouted from the sandy soil. Fraser Island is unusual in that even though the soil is sandy, it’s rich because of an amazing fungus called Mycorrhiza which releases nutrients into the soil that are able to be absorbed by plants. I noticed lots of odd-looking brown mushrooms poking out of the sand in different places and didn’t realize till afterwards what an important role they play.

After a few kilometres of day dreaming, I found the Jabiru walking track and followed the sandy path north into the scrub.

Wherever I looked in the sand I could see the paw prints of dingoes. Some of them were huge – almost as large as my hand.

Somewhere in the back of my head a sensible voice was warning “What if you get chased by a pack of these apex predators?”

Somewhere else, a very optimistic but less-sensible voice suggested that by pedalling a fat bike on soft sand I might outrun a pack of hungry dingoes.

Which voice do you think sounded more reasonable?

The voice of optimism won, and I rolled happily along the Jabiru track, hoping the dingoes would ignore the tasty cyclist.

Jabiru is a long thin swamp stretching northwards through the middle of the island.

The Jabiru Track follows the swamp northwards eventually coming out between the dunes near Dilli village, where I had ridden the day before.

Even though the path is soft and sandy in places, it’s a pleasant ride. For someone on a fat bike, it’s a better alternative than the inland track. If I return to Fraser and am unable to ride along the beach due to wind or tides, I’d definitely take the Jabiru track over the bumpier Inland track.

I had promised my family that today would be a shorter ride, so I reluctantly turned the bike around at about 10am, near the northern end of the swamp, to begin my trip home.

I’d spent about 90 minutes riding up this sandy trail, and expected to return to the barge around 11.30.

One or two parts of track were too steep and soft, which meant I had to push the bike for a few metres, but I was comfortably averaging about 9 or 10 km/h.