“Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood… Make big plans. Aim high in hope and work.” Architect Daniel H. Burnham, one of Chicago’s many original movers and shakers, wrote this in 1909 when he penned his famous Chicago Plan.
The sand is moving. Tonnes of it are constantly shifting inland swept along by relentless winds. There’s no vegetation to be seen on the Stonetool Sand Blow. Like a silica glacier from another planet, it’s an inspirational vista that Frank Herbert may have had in mind when he created the planet Arrakis for his classic science fiction novel ‘Dune’. No human footprints either. This sand blow stretches from Fraser Island’s eastern shore for at least a kilometre. From my vantage point one hundred or so metres abo ve, it resembles a wide river of sun-dappled gold fringed by olivine paperbark forest. My eyes are drawn to its inexorable motion.
A slight ripple on the water gives it away, though it could be a duck, a grebe perhaps? The small hairy back moves purposefully forward, dives and disappears. Not a duck or a grebe. It’s a platypus.