Seventy-Five Mile Beach

Seventy-Five Mile Beach runs the eastern side of K'gari, formerly Fraser Island, off the Queensland coast. The island is the largest sand island on earth, a hundred and twenty kilometres long and built entirely of sand deposited over hundreds of thousands of years, with rainforest growing on it.

The beach is legally a road. It is gazetted as a highway, four-wheel-drive vehicles use it at speed, light aircraft land on it, and the ordinary road rules apply including speed limits and breath testing. Driving is possible for a window either side of low tide and not otherwise, and vehicles are caught by incoming water every year.

The sea here is not for swimming, and this is not a cautious framing. The surf is heavy, the rips are strong, and this stretch of coast has both tiger sharks and a persistent record of drownings. The swimming is done inland — at Lake McKenzie, a perched dune lake of rainwater and white silica sand, and in Eli Creek, which runs clear across the beach and is floated down rather than swum in.

There is very little built: a few resorts and campsites, ranger stations, and the wreck of the *Maheno*, a liner blown ashore in 1935 and rusting where it lies. Dingoes on K'gari are wild, are a genuine hazard, and the management rules around food, children and walking alone are strict for reasons that are documented. The island's fresh water is the other surprise: rain filters through the sand into perched lakes and creeks that run clear and cold across the beach into the sea, and Eli Creek alone discharges several million litres an hour.

A gazetted highway with aircraft landing on it, on the largest sand island in the world. You may not swim — tiger sharks and a rip, and the wreck of the Maheno is a landmark rather than a shelter. Dingo rules about food, children and walking alone are enforced and exist because people have been killed.