The plan for today was to explore the lakes and rainforest in the southern half of the island. We headed up the Cornwells Break Rd, near our campsite to Stone Tool sand blow (blowout), there are quite a few of these large open areas of shifting sand. From here we continued to the Lake Waddy lookout. Lake Waddy is the deepest lake at 11.5m and is characterised by the large sand dune that is slowly filling the lake in one metre per year, its popular for sand boarding into the lake but with the cool weather and 1.4 km hike down to the lake we decided to move on.

Lake Waddy

From here through dense forest and over many bumps and dips in the sandy tracks we headed for Central Station. Central Station was once called Forest Station and was the central operations area for the timber industry that was the main industry on the island from 1863 to 1991. There were up to 30 houses, a school, stores and a mill with a tram line to the coast. Most of this has been removed and the rainforest has regrown. It is the only place in the world were rainforest grows on sand and with the amount of water that continually flows down the creeks it’s no surprise that it can support rainforest. The Wangoolba Creek that flows through Central Station also supports the King Fern which is the largest fern in the world with fronds up to 7 m in length.

Central Station Boardwalk

King Fern

From here we drove on to Lake McKenzie where we had lunch. Lake McKenzie is the most popular spot on the island, all the tour buses and tour operators stop here and despite the cool temperatures the tourists still go in for a swim. The water is crystal clear with a white sandy bottom, it’s pretty hard to resist going for a swim but not being able to persuade Jacky to go in, I would have felt somewhat out of place surrounded by bikini clad backpackers so I decided not to go in as well.

Lake McKenzie

It was now mid-afternoon and we were planning to travel further south to some more lakes but with over 20kms back to our camp from Lake McKenzie and with the tracks allowing for 20km/hr at best we had over an hour to get back to camp so we decided to call it a day. Jacky was pretty anxious that we wouldn’t be late for our dinner date.

We set off for Happy Valley just as the sun was going down and with the tide out we made better time than I expected. The speed limit along the main beach is 80km/hr but I found 70 was pretty comfortable even then you had to be pretty careful with the many creek crossings, some you could drive through without really slowing down but others dug trenches in the sand up to 30 cms deep so you always had to be ready to slow right down.

Dinner was excellent, they did chicken with bacon, cheese and a mushroom sauce, the drive back to camp was interesting, with just sand and water the spotlights had little effect, we also had some rock areas to negotiate plus the numerous creeks. We arrived safely back at camp and even pulled in to the correct track off the beach with the help of a way point in the GPS. It was certainly the first time we had ever driven 30kms on a beach to go to a restaurant for dinner.