Follow us on Facebook for news and deals. Menu 07 Butchulla people The Butchulla have been living on Fraser Island for the past years. Shipwrecks As well as its beautiful rainforests, Fraser Island is also noted for its treacherous waters. Middens, artifact scatters, fish traps, scarred trees and campsites bear witness to the lives of the original inhabitants. Aboriginal spiritual beliefs intimately connect people with the seasons, the land and life on it.
Butchulla people have gained their sophisticated knowledge of the island environment over thousands of years, and maintain a strong connection today. Abundant marine life was once a major food source. Shellfish were collected, while fish were speared or ingeniously caught in stone traps that isolated them at low tide. Turtle and dugong were hunted seasonally, and eels, tortoises, waterfowl and eggs were found in waterways.
In the forest, foods included birds, berries, sweet banskia nectar and honey from the hives of stingless native bees. Women pounded flour from the roots of bungwall ferns and dug clumps of yams and other bulbs, always returning bulbs to the ground to ensure a future supply. In July , explorer Matthew Flinders sailed the east coast, landing for a day to collect water and wood, and for botanists to collect plant specimens.
In , survivors of the wrecked ship Stirling Castle took shelter on the island before being rescued by a Brisbane search party. Imaginative accounts by one survivor, Eliza Fraser, became embellished as she travelled Australia and Britain earning money and fame from her ordeal.
Another survivor's story described Captain Fraser's death from natural causes, but Eliza's stories inspired widespread hostility towards Aborigines. These lakes develop when a saucer-shaped 'hard pan' of organic debris, sand and peat forms in a depression between dunes enabling run-off and rainwater to collect and slowly filter to the watertable below. Barrage lakes form when a mobile sand dune dams a watercourse, usually in younger dunes close to the coast. Interested visitors can walk to Lake Wabby on K'gari, from the eastern beach.
Window lakes, generally found at low elevations, form where the ground surface drops below the watertable level and fills with groundwater. Some window lakes are barraged by sand dunes. All the freshwater lakes are low in nutrients and support few plants and animals.
Most lakes have only two or three fish species. Eli and Wanggoolba Creeks are noted for their flow of crystal clear water—mainly localised outflows of groundwater from the sandmass. They contrast with the golden-brown, tannin stained creeks and seepages that flow into Lake Booomanjin.
Most plants growing on sand draw mineral nourishment from two unlikely sources. They strip the fine mineral coating from grains of beach sand turning the yellowish grains white and also absorb small amounts of atmospheric trace minerals, washed into the sand by rain. Decaying plants return these minerals to the sand.
Over time, minerals are concentrated in the sandmass, providing nutrients to support a succession of forest types, from coastal pioneers and shrubby woodlands to tall rainforests.
As each successive dune forms, a thicker, deeper nutrient layer develops, able to support taller, more complex forest. But on Great Sandy's older dunes the nutrient layer has been leached by water beyond the reach of even deep tree roots. The tall forests are replaced by stunted woodlands, shrubs and low heaths. This phenomenon—'retrogressive succession'—is of international scientific interest.
Older dunes generally lie to the west on K'gari, overlaid partly by progressively younger dunes to the east. Life is abundant—pippies shellfish and moon snails live in the shifting intertidal sand; sand-bubbler crab colonies leave patterns of tiny sand balls; ghost crabs scuttle across the sand at night.
Watch out for bluebottles with long blue stingers, sometimes washed ashore following strong winds. Flotsam, such as jellyfish is food for scavenging crabs and birds, adding nutrients to the sand. Holding the coastal foredunes together are salt-tolerant pioneer plants: pigface, with fleshy angular leaves and purple flowers, goatsfoot vine, with purple trumpet flowers, and beach spinifex, that creeps over the dunes and traps sand swept from the beach by the wind. Pioneer plant species begin nutrient and soil development.
Their roots host bacteria that convert airborne nitrogen into nitrates that enrich the soil. Small, hardy trees such as beach casuarina, coastal banksia and pandanus are a more permanent stabilising force on the foredunes. They protect the wattles, hopbush, tuckeroo and stunted eucalyptus trees from harsh salt-laden winds. Abundant banksia flowers provide plentiful food for the insects and nectar-feeding birds in these coastal forests. Protected from the harshest salt-laden winds, and growing where richer sand begins to develop, trees in the mixed forests and woodlands are larger than those of the coastal forests, although more stunted than the same species in the tall eucalypt forests.
Fires clear the understorey of foxtail sedge, bracken, blady grass, and fallen leaves and twigs, and provide an ashbed for new seedling growth. Over time, trees develop hollows that shelter nesting birds and nocturnal gliding possums. Ant nests are conspicuous on the forest floor, and more than species of ants have been recorded in Great Sandy.
Protecting the forest core here are tall eucalypt trees, including smooth-barked forest red gums and scribbly gums. These tall trees contrast with tessellated barked bloodwoods, string-barked satinays, and blackbutts, with their rough-barked bases and smooth, light upper limbs. Tall eucalypt forest grows on the ridges on the high middle dunes in the centre of the sandmass. It surrounds the central forest core, protecting the rainforest from the drying winds and salt.
After fire, eucalypts of the tall forest regenerate from seeds released into the ash bed. Land was cleared and agricultural practices established which in turn disturbed the natural supply of food cycles of the native people.
Traditions and hunting methods had to be altered for survival. Day-to-day management of the island today is primarily the responsibility of the Department of Environment and Heritage through the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.
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