From Noosa K'gari Fraser Island Day Tour

K'gari (Fraser Island): the world's largest sand island

K'gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, stretches about 120 kilometres along the coast north of Noosa and is made almost entirely of sand blown and washed here over hundreds of thousands of years. It is the only place on Earth where tall rainforest grows on sand dunes, and its perched freshwater lakes, coloured sand cliffs and long ocean beach earned it UNESCO World Heritage listing. The name K'gari means paradise in the language of the Butchulla people, the island's traditional owners.

A K'gari day trip from Noosa is the simplest way to experience the island, because no ordinary car can drive its sandy tracks and the ferry crossing needs a permit. On this tour everything is arranged: the coach ride north, the ferry from Inskip Point, the 4WD and the national park fees. Is K'gari worth visiting on a single day? Yes, if you accept an early start; the route covers the four most famous sights with time to swim at two of them.

Seventy Five Mile Beach: the sand highway

Seventy Five Mile Beach runs the whole length of K'gari's eastern shore and is a gazetted road, complete with speed limits and a landing strip for light aircraft. The 4WD drives along the hard sand near the waterline at low tide, with the Pacific surf on one side and dunes, coloured sand cliffs and coastal heath on the other. Because the beach is the island's main road, the day is planned around the tides, which is why the tour leaves Noosa so early.

From the vehicle you watch for dingoes trotting along the tide line, sea eagles overhead and, in winter, humpback whales spouting offshore. The guide explains the sights as they pass: the Pinnacles coloured sands, the rock outcrop of Indian Head in the distance and the creeks that cut through the beach. For most visitors the drive itself is a highlight of any Fraser Island tour, a sensation of open space that no inland road can match.

Eli Creek: float down the island's largest creek

Eli Creek is the largest freshwater creek on the eastern beach, pouring millions of litres of clear, filtered rainwater into the ocean every hour. The water emerges from the island's sand aquifer, so it is cool, drinkable and transparent, and it flows fast enough to carry you gently downstream. A boardwalk leads upstream through pandanus and paperbark to a set of steps where you enter the creek and let the current float you back towards the beach.

The tour allows about 45 minutes here, enough for two or three floats and a walk along the boardwalk. Bring swimwear under your clothes and a towel, because this is the first swim of the day. Eli Creek is also a good place to see the island's freshwater life, including small fish and eels in the deeper pools, and it is one of the sights that answers the question of what to do on K'gari in one day.

The Maheno shipwreck

The SS Maheno was a trans-Tasman passenger liner launched in 1905 and later a hospital ship during the First World War. In 1935, while being towed to Japan for scrap, she broke her tow in a cyclone and was driven ashore on Seventy Five Mile Beach, where she has rusted in the salt and sand ever since. Today only the upper decks and the skeleton of the hull remain above the beach, their ochre colour striking against the surf and the pale sand.

The wreck is one of the most photographed sights on K'gari, and the tour stops for about 30 minutes so you can walk around it at a safe distance while the guide tells its story, including its brief use as a bombing target during the Second World War. The best light is in the morning, when the sun is behind you and the ocean beyond the wreck is a deep blue, which fits neatly into the order of this itinerary.

Lake McKenzie (Boorangoora)

Lake McKenzie, known to the Butchulla people as Boorangoora, is a perched lake: a bowl of rainwater sitting on a layer of compacted sand and organic matter high above the water table, fed only by rain. The sand around it is almost pure white silica, so fine that it squeaks underfoot, and the water shades from pale turquoise in the shallows to deep blue in the centre. It is slightly acidic and so clean that few fish or plants live in it, which keeps it remarkably clear.

The tour spends about 75 minutes at the lake, with lunch served here and time to swim, float and photograph. There are toilets and shaded picnic areas near the beach, and the walk from the car park takes only a few minutes. Many visitors consider the Lake McKenzie swim the best part of a K'gari day tour, and the midday timing means the sun is high and the colours of the water are at their brightest.

Central Station and Wanggoolba Creek rainforest

Central Station was the island's forestry headquarters from the 1920s until logging ended in 1991, and the old camp clearing is now the gateway to K'gari's most accessible rainforest. A boardwalk follows Wanggoolba Creek, a stream so clear and silent that it seems to have no water at all, beneath giant king ferns, satinay trees and kauri pines rising from pure sand. Nearby Pile Valley holds some of the tallest satinays on the island, trees once harvested for the piles of the Suez Canal.

The guided walk lasts about 75 minutes at an easy pace on boardwalks and sandy paths, with the guide pointing out strangler figs, staghorn ferns and the bird and reptile life of the forest. Central Station is a place of quiet after the open beach, and it completes the picture of why K'gari is unique: rainforest, lake, creek and ocean beach all in one day before the ferry back to Inskip Point and the drive to Noosa.