Shipwrecks on the runway

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately"

Henry David Thoreau

The high tide and storm surge forced us inland for the rest of the afternoon so we made our first foray into the forest.  The single lane sandy road wound its way through a tall stand of satinay trees in Pile Valley.  

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

The exotic bird calls were muted by the dense carpet of ferns and the shadowy sounds of the rustling undergrowth were subdued by the green canopy ceiling.  I peered through the dappled light certain I would see Hobbits in this enchanted world, but what I found was a different kind of  magic.  

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, 

under whose shade you do not expect to sit." 

 Nelson Henderson

Incredibly, some of these trees on Fraser have been growing in the sand for 1200 years.  The Aborigines have lived on Fraser Island for perhaps tens of thousands of years.  This oldest continuous culture did not cut down these trees, but lived symbiotically with nature.  They gathered branches for shelters, bark for canoes, piccabeen palm fronds for baskets and vines for nets.  The demise of the trees in the European logging era is almost as twisted as the Colonial English attempt to exterminate the Aborigines.    

Just as the culture on the island had changed, time had changed me.  The last time I visited Lake Mckenzie I was a twenty year old backpacker.  Back then the pure white sandy silica beach and clear turquoise water appeared like paradise in the warm winter sunshine.  Like me, the Lake had also been altered.  The plentiful rain had made the water level much higher and so the beaches were narrower. 

"The larger the lake of knowledge the longer the shore of wonder." Proverb

The island has over a hundred fresh water lakes.   The Aboriginal name for Lake Mckenzie is Boorangoora and the water is so pure that few aquatic species can survive.  My blonde acumen was somewhat confused to hear the lake was perched.  How could it be full of fresh water fish?  My enlightenment was completed by the information boards' explanation.  A perched lake is where the water is held above the water table by an impervious layer of sand or organic matter.  It would seem my personal lake of knowledge had not expanded as much as my waistline over the last couple of decades.  With the light starting to fade we though it best to head back to the cottage and see how much power we had stored from the solar panels.  

"You can land anywhere once." Unkown.

Early the next morning we made use of the low tide and drove out onto the beach past some caution signs.  The highway rules state that we would have to give way to any oncoming aircraft.  What were the odds?

"In a twin-engine aircraft, the purpose of the second engine 

is to supply the pilot with enough power 

to fly to the scene of the crash." 
Unknown

The 75 mile beach runs along most of the east coast of Fraser but only a couple of sections are actually used by the local airline.  

"It's always better to be down on the ground wishing you were up in the air than up in the air wishing you were down on the ground." 

It defied even my dumb blonde comprehension how a pilot may have to avoid a shipwreck when making his approach to the beach runway.

"Through the black night and driving rain 

A ship is struggling, all in vain" 

Adelaide Anne Procter

There is a graveyard of vessels wrecked on Fraser Island,  the skeleton of the Maheno still lists in the ever changing sands.  In Maori the word maheno means "island" but the Scottish ship builders could never have imagined its untimely fate on such a far flung island.  Built in 1905 as a Trans-Tasman luxury passenger liner, the steel hull could carry 420 passengers.

"A shipwrecked sailor on this coast bids you set sail. 

Full many a gallant ship ere we were lost weathered the gale." 

Epitaph

The Maheno was converted into a hosptial ship during WWI and used in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.  The ship then returned to servicing the Sydney to New Zealand passenger route.  By 1935 the vessel had been sold to Japan for scrap.  The huge brass propellors were auctioned separately to pay for the tow back to Osaka.  

"Dashed all to pieces! O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished!"

William Shakespeare

In June 1935, the tow line snapped in an unseasonal cyclone off the Queensland coast and the Maheno washed up on Fraser with a skeleton crew aboard. The Japanese sailors were rumoured to have been too scared to get off the vessel believing the Aborigines to be cannibals. After such a colorful tale it seemed fitting we headed off to view 72 different shades of red and yellow sand on the island.

"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit" 

Ralph Waldo Emerson