THE BEAUTY SPOTS TOUR OF K'GARI (FRASER ISLAND)

I'M in the middle of a ninehour Seinfeld binge, except this fast volley of jokes is being delivered live from the world’s biggest sand island by Peter Meyer, a perfectly lanky Aussie who mixes decades of bush study with keen human observation.

He also tends to giggle like a girl, and usually at his own jokes. He’s never had anyone attacked by a dingo - but he did have a German passenger bitten by a duck.

Cue the sniggers from a bus full of curious first-timers to K'Gari (Fraser Island) who range in age from 35 to 70 years old.

Welcome to the K'Gari Beauty Spots Tour.

The whole bus is laughing, a good thing as it takes our minds off the violent motions as we rock and roll along the tinder dry sand waiting for the tyres to find traction with the loamy road below. It’s our third attempt to get up a steep hill, the last climb before hitting the beach.

"We haven't had rain for six or seven weeks and the roads are tough," says Meyer a K'Gari guide with 24-years’ experience of explaining the wonders of this stunning place; that’s three years short of the 27 years the island has just clocked up as a world-heritage listed site.

Meyer knows more about this place than just about anyone else and he’s got my vote for world’s best guide for negotiating the deeply grooved tracks in a vehicle that looks like it should be deployed for a Mars expedition.

“I've done it 10,000 times,” he says. “They say to be an expert you have to do something 10,000 times, so this must be my Mozart Concerto.”

[Snigger. Snigger.]

While the tracks are tough right now, they are not as bad as the big dry of 2013 when eight months without a drop of rain saw many bogged bush bashers.

Like the Dad with three kids who had been stuck on a hill since early morning waiting for K'Gari tow truck. That’s a big problem when you have 700km of tracks, no street signs, and intermittent phone reception. The rookie four-wheel roadie didn’t know where he was, and Meyer lets us know that the $250 per hour rescue would have paid the mortgage on an Ascott mansion.

"He was suspiciously relaxed," says Meyer who came across the bogged car late in the afternoon. "He was either on Valium. Or at the point of snapping.”

Looking around it’s hard to believe anyone could snap on such a candy-coloured tour that takes in pristine backdrops. There's 75 Mile Beach, an endless (well, not quite, it's 75 miles to be exact) tract of pure white sandy highway best tackled at 80 km per hour, the cinnamon toned Maheno ship wreck, sparkly Ely Creek, Central Station with its towering capsicum green trees and Lake Mackenzie, the blueeyed girl of the island.

Easily as memorable as the locations is the Congo line of pink-skinned blokes the bus passes as we whizz up the beach highway: their deck chairs are lined up in front of monster 4WDs, eyes are on the ocean and the ritual Aussie salute is sent to all who pass. That’s a two-finger tribute accompanied by a slight nod of the head, while the right hand connects with a fresh-from-theesky stubby. This is not fishing. It’s secret men's business for the newly retired.

Along the tour we learn much about the island’s wildlife, such as the Banksia fruit once described by an Irish tourist as “a big, hairy potato thing”.

This tree formed an important part in the diet of the original Bucha owners of the land. They dunked the flowers in water for a sweet beverage and ate the nuts – popped out after the heat of a fire rages through the island – for protein hits.

The island also has over 75 species of mammals but no kangaroos, wombats or platypus; a sad thing given Meyer holds kangaroos up as being the most perfectly engineered animal for the Australian environment.

“You would swear they (kangaroos) were built by a German. They run on two legs, bounce like a ball, can smell rain and can produce two different types of milk for different aged babies.”

“God must have been a German. He thought of everything when he made the ‘roo.”

Our focus diverts to one of K'Gari's man made icons: the skeleton of the Maheno shipwreck, deeply beached on the eastern side of the island since 1935.

The story goes that on its final journey to an Osaka shipbreaker, the former WW1 floating hospital was hit by a huge storm that snapped its 17cm towline. With no propeller