Eastern Beach - Fraser Island

The beach is also lined with popular tourist attractions like the Maheno wreck, Eli Creek, the Cathedrals, and, at the top end, Indian Head. At the most Southern end of 75 mile beach is Hook Point, a main access point to Fraser Island. At this point Fraser Island is only about 500m away from the main land at Inskip Point. A couple of barges provide an on demand ferry service for vehicles wanting to onto or off Fraser Island. The eastern beach is also the main strip with settlements and accommodation on Fraser Island. From South to North the main ones are Dilli Village (only a campground), Eurong Beach Resort and Eurong Second Valley, Happy Valley, and Cathedral Beach.

Although the beach acts as the highway of Fraser Island, it is not always passable at all places at all times. Between Hook Point and Dilli Village the sea often get right up to the dunes at high tide. The same goes for the stretch between Cathedral Beach and Indian Head. On top of this the Eastern beach of Fraser Island is crossed by nearly 200 creeks run offs form the interior of Fraser Island. Some are very tiny and barely noticeable, others are quite large and can carve out deep gorges in the beach. Also the amount of runoff varies with recent rainfall, so where no creek runoff seemed to exit one day, there might be a very deep one the next. All this makes driving on the beach a hazard if not enough attention is paid and many accidents have occurred on Fraser Island because of this.

One of the attractions not sported by seventy five mile beach is swimming and or surfing. The strong currents and rips along the eastern coast of Fraser Island makes is extremely dangerous to go for a swim here and of top of that, large numbers of tiger sharks roam this stretch as well.

The creation of Fraser Island continues right up to today and therefore the beach continues to change and develop. In the 1930’s, after the drought, more topsoil was washed into the sea by the NSW rivers and as a consequence, a lot of extra sand was deposited at the South-East part of Fraser Island. Likewise the beach sometimes loses a lot of sand after a cyclone has hit, washing the beach away and forcing traffic to go inland. However the ongoing process of island building by the currents carrying sand to Fraser Island, the beaches usually recover in a matter of months.