Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

At 120 km long, Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world. It has sand dunes rising over 200 m. Unusual for its amount and type of vegetation, as it is composed entirely of sand, it has blackbutt sclerophyll forests that were logged until 1992 and patches of rainforest. It has 20 major perched lakes, half of the world's total. At 200 ha in area, Lake Boomanjin is the largest perched lake in the world. 

Fraser Island is home to the very rare king fern (Angiopteris evecta), which is found only at 3 locations, 2 of them on the mainland. One place where 20-30 individuals are found is in the Moss Garden in Violet Gorge, a tributary of Carnarvon Gorge, in Carnarvon National Park, the other is in the Blackall Range near the coast of Queensland. It has a bulbous base and fronds that are up to 5 m across.

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Sources & Further reading