A pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow

The road south from Airlie was very long and a bit sad but a three night stop in the comfort of 'Debbie's Place' in Rainbow beach lifted our spirit. The weather was perfect for Nic to explore Frazer Island, the biggest sand dune in the world, on a 4WD tour where she experienced beach road rules and swam in Lake McKenzie's famously clear water.

Meanwhile I took a long walk on the very long Rainbow Beach, so named because of the multi-coloured sand cliffs. I walked for four hours this golden beach peppered with sparkling black granite sand and red ochre, and still only covered a fraction of this beautiful shoreline where the fishes were actually jumping out of the water. Fishes, and a naked man, but that's another story.

With our interest in dolphins stimulated on the Whitsunday islands, we spent three hours kayaking around Inskip Bay watching pods of dolphins leaping and spinning, ducking and diving as the sun sank behind Frazer island and the moon hung low over the mainland.

The next day we took a detour to explore the local sand blow. Neither of us knew what a sand blow was and as we rounded the corner we surprised and slightly confused to discover a huge field of barley, except it wasn't barley, it was sand. Apparently, the strong shore wind blows the sand over the headland and a huge dune moves inland covering all the vegetation in its path creating a mini desert in the middle of a forest.

Trekking across it, it appeared to end in a sheer drop sand-cliff. As I stood as near to the edge as I dared I thought how terrifying it must have been to be one of the original ocean explorers sailing towards a horizon and hoping the world was round after all. I was also reminded of the final scene in Thelma and Louise, but I'm happy to report that both Nic and I were not being chased by police. That happened the next night.