Fraser Island

I spent my last day in Noosa going to the markets at Eumundi which was amazing...much bigger and a better variety of produce than a normal market. We spent around 3 hours there before heading back to Noosa and hitting the beach. It was my last night with Jo, so went out to the hostel club with some guys we met there the night before(ben, ben and Rod). Little did i know that these guys would end up on my fraser island bus (but thats for later).I also got Jo to give me a haircut (shes a hairdresser) so that was nice and cheap!

Anyway, I left Noosa and headed up the coast to Hervey Bay which is where you go to get onto Fraser Island. I spent the day just relaxing and catching up on some much needed sleep, so not much to report there.

FRASER ISLAND
WOW - what can i say...just amazing. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and what they do is get a group of 11 people together, throw them into a 4x4 jeep with some tents and food and a map, and then they get to go and explore this island.

Thats the basic gist...here's how it went for me...

The day before i was due to go on the island, i met with teh rest of the group, and lo and behold, 3 of the guys in my group i had already met in noosa. This was good cause they are nice people, so all was going well. Then there were 3 couples in the group (all lovely) (Kelly and Ollie, Jennie and Russell, and Gemma and Richard) and one annoying guy who got on my nerves every 2 minutes (Chris). We all went to the supermarket to buy our food for the 3 days, and then the next dat at 6am we were up organising everything together. Packing the car was intersting and took about 2 hours! Anyway, we got to the ferry on time to make it to the island and then the fun began. On day 1 we went to an amazing fresh water lake where the water is so pure you can actually drink it! (Lake Birabeen). After some time relaxing in the water we attempted to drive to another fresh water lake only to realise that after an hour we had been going round in circles and were lost. Great! We decided then to go and visit teh Maheno wreck, which is a massive chip wreck on teh sand in the island, and after that we headed to teh camp site. By the time we had put up the tents and made dinner, it was 8pm (that took 3 hours btw) and then we sat around with one of the other groups (where i ran into my friend Dean again from Byron Bay, and met another really nice couple - Simon and Kate) playing drinking games till about 11pm before we hit the sack.

Day 2 - up at 5am (because of the tides, you can only drive on the beach at certain times of the day) to drive to Indian Head. This is a massive rock formation with amazing marine life surrounding it - saw some sharks and stingrays and dolphins! after that we walked to the Champagne Pools but because of the tides, it was quite dangerous to swim there, so we did not stay for long. A trip to Happy Valley (little village on the island) was our final port of call for the day before setting up camp. I had a go at driving on this day and its actually extremely difficult to drive on sand and through rainforests...the tyre pressures are brought right down, so you feel as though you are driving with flat tyres. ALso, it hadnt rained for a really long time, so the sand was very soft. This meant that we got bogged into the sand quite a lot. Lucky for us, there were 7 guys in our group so lots of man power to push teh vehicle out of the sand! (and beleive me, this happened quite a few times). That night we camped alongside 2 other groups, and we saw dingoes for the first time as well. Disngoes are wild dogs that are really dangerous as they have ben known to kill humans. we were given strict instructuions what to do in case of seeing any, and luckily for us, there were 33 of us against 1 of them so he backed away quickly. Had an amazing BBQ and more drinks that night.

Day 3 - up at 5am again (really exhausted by this point as have had minianl sleep for teh past 2 nights) to drive toLake Mackenzie - this is one of the highlights of the trip. It is a massive fresh water lake (about 3 times the size of the one on day 1), with a bright white sand beach surrounding it. We spend the day sunbathing and swimming in the lake before we had to catch our ferry back that afternoon.
When we got back to the hostel we had to do an inspection of teh car - they check that you have not been throuhg sea water cause that can damage the vehicle and they check that you have not lost anything. we lost a couple of small things but the guy in charge said he would let us off it the guys gave him a couple of their beers - excellent!

After sorting everything out and having a well deserved shower, i had to dash to get my night bus up to Airlie Beach (where i am just now) to do teh Whitsunday Islands. The night bus was as fun as usual - mininal sleep and interruptions every few hours to get off the bus. lets just say, i'm very excitied to sleep in a bed tonight!

Thats all the news for now, I'll update soon

xxx