We arrived in Hervey bay and checked into the YHA where you can camp. A nice hostel that seemed quite luxary compared to what we'd become accustomed to. We went for a walk into town and got completely drenched as it decided it to piss it down when we were miles from the hostel. The next day wasn't much better so we were kinda worried that our trip to Fraser would be a nightmare as camping in the rain is never fun. We went to an orientation in the afternoon where they gave us an itinary for Fraser and a quick intro on how not to wreck the 4 wheel drive we'd be taking. They put us into the groups of 11 per vehicle and we had to sort who'd be doing the driving etc.
The next morning we had to be up at 6.30 to go over to the island. The black clouds had cleared ant it had turned to beautiful sunshine that was expected to continue for the next couple of days so we'd totally lucked out! We loaded all our supplies, got a quick intro on how to drive a 4wd vehicle and then were on our way. The barge over to the island didn't take long. We had an Essex guy called Dan driving to start with and set off to lake Mckenzie. The "road" wasn't too rough to start with but it's still a little nerve racking having an unknown bloke with no experience 4wding down some of the tracks. Lake Mckenzie is beautiful turquiose lake with a white sandy beach. The water is so pure you can drink it. Apparently it's fed by an underground freshwater spring. If you swim out into the middle you're supposed to be able to feel the current from it making it impossible to swim down. We swam for ages but finding it is a needle in a haystack. We returned to the beach defeated. We went back to the truck and it was my turn to take the wheel. Driving a massive great landcruiser was a little daunting at first but not as bad as I'd been expecting and definately a bit of a rush! We hit some pretty rough sections that had the people in the back being thrown about a bit but nothing so bad that I thought I was going to get stuck or crash the thing. I drove up to Lake Wabby lookout, a lake perched at the end of a massive sandune. From there it was down to the beach to setup camp. We had an Irish family in our group (mum and 2 grown up kids). She took up her motherly role and cooked us a steak dinner theen just chilled on the beach with a couple of beers. We saw a couple of Dingos near the camp as I expect they could smell the food.
The next morning we were up very early for the drive up 75mile beach to Indian heads. There's only certain times of day you can drive along the beach due to the tides so we had to set out early. We hiked up to Indian heads and could see some tiger sharks in the water below, what looked like mum and 4 baby sharks. You can't swim in the ocean anywhere near Fraser Island as there's sharks everywhere! When we came back down there was a Dingo right next to the truck. They're definately not scared of you but I was pleased to see that they're not that big so I'm sure a firm kick would send one on its way if it did get a bit aggressive. Jenn didn't seem quite so confident and looked more like a scared kid trying to hide behind me! We drove back down the beach to the site of the shipwreck, an old passenger ship that ended up there in the 1930s. After a few pics we went to the village of Happy Valley to get some supplies then returned to our campsite. We walked to Lake Wabby in the afternoon. and attempted to sandboard down the sandbank into the lake with limited success. Great fun even if we were crap at it!. TBC
