From My Cyberjournal 51 December 2004

Geologically millions of years old, the largest sand island in the world has a bit of history. For thousands of years it was K'gari, home to the Butchulla Aborigines. In 1836, the ship Stirling Castle was shipwrecked off the central Queensland coast and it's Captain, James Fraser along with his wife Eliza and a handful of other survivors, beached their long boats on what the colonizers had mapped as Great Sandy Island. Suspicious of these washed in intruders, the Butchulla killed the captain and his first mate. Eliza lived with the Aborigines for some weeks until her rescue. She made such a career of sensationalizing her tale all over England that the island has been stuck with her name ever since.

The loggers then discovered the island's rich forests. The timber industry not only decimated the trees but the Butchalla people as well. Finally, post-war environmentalists waged a campaign until the last log was felled not too long ago, in 1991; but by then the Aborigines had long vanished from the island. Happily, Fraser island is now in the World Heritage list.

During World War II the island was used as a training ground for commandos. About 260 operators, known as the Z Unit, were taught jungle survival at North White Cliffs. Under a stopwatch, the trainees were required to do an 8 kilometer run with full pack to Lake McKenzie and back, along with a swim, fully clothed, across the lake. Among the trainees were Filipino volunteers, including the famous war ace, Captain Jesus Villamor. Following their training, Villamor and other Filipinos, inflitrated the Philippines by submarine in January of 1943, setting up the Allied Intelligence Bureau's Planet Party in Negros.

This is the Fraser Island that for the past ten years, my daughter Grace and her husband Howard, their two sons Damien and Alex and Howard's father Warren, (and Irene and I) have made a pilgrimage to every two years. Our sandy Shangrila never loses it's magic. It was our sixth visitation. Brahmin kites glide overhead. Oyster-catchers scurry on the wet sand. Monitor lizards trudge along the forest floor. Dingoes silently slink by. There are the worms to pluck out of the surf's edge, the pipi clams to dig up, and the dart and whiting to bag with hook and line.

Glorious sunrise and sunset. During our fleeting moment on this island, life has no cares, anxieties are shelved, and the universe is in harmony. For that respite of peace, that heightened sense of being alive, one has to thank the Divine Maker.