WWII jeep trip to Fraser Island

A four-day trip in historic 60-year-old WWII military vehicles to Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island situated in the subtropics off Queensland, Australia, less than two hundred miles from Brisbane. It is the only place on earth where rainforest grows on sand.

The vehicles that took part were:
Four WWII army jeeps (Willys MB and Ford GPW)
One Dodge WC-53 Carryall
One Dodge WC-51 Weapons Carrier
One Studebaker US6 6x6 truck

We set up camp behind a sand dune on the beach and travelled a number of 4WD tracks on the island and for two and a half days of the trip I had the windshield laid flat, enduring some sunburn and sandblasting as I drove the beach at 40 MPH. I filmed with a camcorder in my right hand as I was the only person in my jeep.

This short clip has been edited down from two hours of 'WWII jeep cam' such as you see here. You ca hear engine noise, wind whistling on the camcorder mike, squeaks and rattles from the jeep, and short snippets of me talking. I wish I had a steadycam but you can see the shocks the jeep is being subjected to as I drove up to 30 MPH (50 km/h) on these trails. Although I would have loved to, I just couldn't film the extremely rough bits (low range 4WD) as I was concentrating on driving properly.

I hope you enjoy travelling with me in my old warhorse as much as I enjoyed driving. It was a real blast!

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• WWII
• WW2
• military
• army
• jeep
• Fraser
• Island
• Queensland
• Australia
• offroad
• 4WD
• 4x4
• willys
• mb
• ford
• gpw
• G503
• camping

[Picard1138]

At 4:00 it looks like someone's working on a starter. How did your GPW stand up to the sand?

[1944GPW]

Yes, that's a starter that need repairing. That and the brakes were the most serious problems on that trip, it went very smoothly.

Driving along the hard-packed beach sand was absolutely easy, but inland we encountered fine loose sand and the jeeps constantly needed steering corrections. I spent three days washing the jeep carefully when I got back to remove all the sand.

[bfrhys]

Wow! Where did you find a WWII Jeep in Australia?

[sorenc3612]

You am´´makes the some of the best offroad videos i have ever seen !! Five stars from me!

[81two2door]

Great Vid - Hard to go past basic mechanics with few electronics for reliability. Keep it up, i'll be watching.

[tonzislandsandman]

Fraser loves to play with starter motors. I'v had trouble with mine twice on the island, and I'v seen many other people in a similar boat. The sand and salt gets into them and they wont fire. The first one that went, the Island's mechanic took it apart, cleaned it and it was good as new again, the 2nd one was damaged and had to be replaced. Push starting is a great memory of mine on fraser haha.

[jeepman65]

Looks like all the vehicles handled themselves very well. Cant wait to get my '65 rolling. Great vid.

[babyweiny]

very cool man...thats how you do it...i'm looking for a willys myself

[cmtecarvalho]

Great adventure fellow, congratulations for it and for your Willys! I'm also a Willys owner (1978 Brazilian Cj5 nicknamed "Thunderbolt"). See you!

[krookedKiller13]

that's really cool! I could only imagine how beautiful it would have been in person. It's really cool how you drove to a shipwreck that was still there.