PARADISE REBORN
IT WAS the week of my fiftieth birthday. Like me, our crude but simple camping set-up had been sitting idle and collecting dust for too long. The Prado was running a little rough and it, too, needed some fresh air and an escape from all the mask-wearing and talk of lockdowns. A week at Fraser Island (K’gari) was the ticket for us both.
Quite literally, K’gari means ‘paradise’ to the Butchulla people, but given all I’d seen and heard on the news last year, would it now be a ‘paradise lost’? Would the lush rainforest, majestic trees and clean and vibrant landscapes be a scorched and distant memory? There was only one way to find out.
CAMPFIRE CHAOS
ON October 14, 2020, four beachside campers north of Orchid Beach failed to extinguish their sand-covered but still-smouldering campfire, triggering an 870km² bushfire that ravaged over half the World Heritage-listed island. It kept airborne and ground-based fire crews busy defending forest
