fraser island great walk with kids

[ebanna]

We have just started taking our 3 kids (ages 5,6 and for overnight hikes. We're going to Fraser in June and would love to take them on the walk from Dilli Village to Central Station, stopping overnight at Lake Boomajin and at Lake Benaroon. It's very hard to research this hike online, I would really like some idea of how hard it is and why, and how stressed we should be about camping overnight at the unfenced campground at Lake Benaroon. Are hiking boots necessary (my husband and I will be carrying very heavy packs!). I would greatly appreciate any advice on this.

Last edited by ebanna on Wed 15 Apr, 2015 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

[RonK]

I've been a frequent visitor over the years, and have seen the dingos go from shy, solitary animals to aggressive hunting packs.

It may be just me, but there is no way I'd be taking small children walking on Fraser.

[Gadgetgeek]

I'd be really hesitant to put kids that size on a walk on Fraiser. It would be a family tent situation if it were to be, and I'd have a pretty solid persuasion stick with (like a fish whacker, not just a hiking pole) Sand really saps the energy, so unless you're training on sand, I'd say that you will struggle with heavier than normal packs. That said, Fraiser is great with a 4x4 that the kids can shelter in, and have some fun. Another factor is that in the regular camp-grounds you may have to deal with a fair few idiots. my recommendation is that if you can, get over past Indian head, since that's the limit for the rentals and tag-along backpackers, and get to where its quieter, There still might be a lot of people around, but in general its the folks that know what they are doing.

[weeds]

A mate of mine reckons kids should be able to walk their age in kms and a 1/4 of the weight......

Just did a quick search, approx 7km each day?? I reckon that's doable.

On my three trips to fraser dingo have never been an issue.....follow the guidelines and all is good.....

How are you getting back from central??

I have no idea of difficulty apart from not liking walking in sand........I would say the track should have a covering of leafs.

[tomh]

It is - mostly level leaf-covered track

walking track north of Happy Valley, Fraser Island

walking track north of Happy Valley, Fraser Island

apart from the occasional sand blow with adjacent small lakes

The track skirts a typical sand blow north of Happy Valley, Fraser Island

[Gadgetgeek]

weeds, I've never had a problem with dingos either, and I've been on about 5 beach fishing trips there, until the last one where we had a couple little ones with us. the dingo was circling every vehicle with kids in or near them, and focused enough that a hand stayed very near a knife pretty well the whole time, nothing moved that dog on besides us leaving. The dog looked pretty healthy. point being, kids might totally change how the dogs start acting.

[ebanna]

Thank you very much for your replies. We're re-considering staying in any unfenced campgrounds - it might not be worth the stress. But do you believe it's dangerous even going walking with kids or just staying in unfenced campgrounds?

[tomh]

It's been some years since walking at Fraser Island - and that was a multi-day from Happy Valley, the most northern and least frequented part of the Great Walk. We camped at non-fenced camp sites and no dingoes were seen at any time. We used local 4WD taxi services to get to and from landing, start and finish but cannot remember details of those services - they have probably changed anyway.
As for dingoes, everyone will have their own experiences (including nil for me) and opinion but parks and wildlife publish good guides from which you can make your own decision:
http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/fraser/dingo-faqs.html
http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/fraser/pdf/be-dingo-safe-flyer.pdf

[GPSGuided]

Sounds like there's a real dingo problem there on the island. Is the authorities doing anything about it?

[RonK]

Sounds like there's a real dingo problem there on the island. Is the authorities doing anything about it?

The dingos have been there for ever, and due to isolation are the purest strain of dingo in Australia.

Generally the problems have arisen from visitors feeding them, or leaving food and food scraps in the camps. This has emboldened the animals to approach people and camps looking for food, snd they have become increasingly aggressive about it.

Most of the official response is to educate visitors, and occasionally to remove troublesome animals.

I've had small packs of aggressive animals approach me in camp, and it was difficult to drive them off. My tent was also ripped open while unattended, even though there was no food inside.

As I recall in the most recent incident a person jogging solo on the beach was surrounded and attacked, and may have been seriously injured if a vehicle had not arrived.

If you have small children it would be most unwise to leave them unwatched. If you don't have the protection of a vehicle don't take them.

[ebanna]

RonK could I ask if your experiences are whilst camping on the great walk or camping on the beach?
Thank you in advance.

[RonK]

This happened while camping on the beach, where people and protection were never far away.

I can't imagine what it would be like in the bush to be surrounded by a pack of dingos and trying to protect 3 small children.
I presume you are aware there is at least one known fatal attack.

[ebanna]

Yes, you mean the 9 year old who was killed in 2001? Chilling stuff, that's why I posted!

[RonK]

Yes. There was also an adult tourist who disappeared at Lake Wabby. At the inquest evidence was given that when found years later the bones had been gnawed by dogs, but an open verdict was returned.

[GPSGuided]

Thanks for the detailed history and circumstance Ron. Difficult situation. Is the dingo overpopulated there on the island?

[RonK]

Thanks for the detailed history and circumstance Ron. Difficult situation. Is the dingo overpopulated there on the island?

I'm not sure if the dingos are overpopulated, but visitor numbers are very much higher.

Years ago dingos were shy solitary animals and rarely seen. Back then there were herds of brumbies wandering the island. Some people think the increased aggression of the dogs is linked with the decision to remove the brumbies which would have been a food source for them, as they frequently succumbed to sand colic.

[Gadgetgeek]

I don't want to enter into any sort of debate, because on the subject of dingos I'm practically unarmed. However I can compare dingo-human interaction trends to black bear-human interactions as I grew up in black bear country and had many encounters with them. In general there are not too many places in western canada that have seen massive environmental change as well as visitor rate change like has happened with Fraiser. That means that the bears are pretty predictable as far as trends, and there is some pretty solid data surrounding how animals become problems and what are effective measures. On an island the size of Fraiser, re-locating doesn't really work, unlike northern canada. Even in some of the most disrupted places, like the tar-sands projects and the like, bears can be moved a couple hundred kms away or simply move off themselves. Sure there are occasional problems with young bears, but the bears per unit area is so much lower that comparatively few interactions occur.
Also over time, bear-human interaction has followed pretty well the same sort situations, fed bear = problem bear = dead bear. But its a bit different than the dingos who have had major disruptions and far more people in close contact with them, so it becomes harder to predict what could happen. In northern canada its not out of the question to be the first human a bear has seen, not so with the fraiser dingos. Even when the mountains first got flooded with tourists who fed bears to get pictures, as far as I understand it, yes a lot of bears got put down, but at the time there wasn't a great concern that culling would massively deplete the gene-pool. (time has told a different story, but in the mean time we've also gotten smarter)

I guess what I'm getting at is that too many things change too fast to predict how any given dog might react, where-as in a stable environment, one can make better guesses.

Interesting thing I heard a while back was that coyotes in north america show up in the fossil record as both small lone hunter and larger pack-hunter types depending on what other predators were around and which prey was plentiful, And that change happened since the last ice-age which isn't really all that long for such a drastic change. Dogs of all types can adapt very fast to their surroundings.

[Champion_Munch]

This might be worth noting if you're thinking of going in the next month or so... (I know you said June but in case you changed your mind)

http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/park-alerts/13419.html

[Lizzy]

We went 4WDing last September and camped at 2 fenced campgrounds- I chose these because of the kids (age 8 and 10) just so we didn't have to worry as much. While out doing walks we made sure they kept close by and had whistles. The dingoes we saw were quite bold- saw one run straight up to a man on the beach with his kids.
I have also done some of the Great walk about 15 years ago with 2 other adults and can't recall any problems other than March flies!!

[lajs]

A bit off topic but has anyone had encounters with dingoes in Great Sandy NP? In particular, any dingoes on the Cooloola Great Walk?

[weighty walker]

I did the Cooloola Great walk in June this year (solo) and while I saw plenty of paw prints on the track I didn't see any dingoes. It was a fabulous walk

[Damo2010]

The paw prints might be wild dogs. I've heard that the NPWS have a trapping program in some areas, but this would depend on funding.