We arrived at Hervey
Bay and said Goodbye to Kristen as she was going further down the
coast to Rainbow beach to get to Fraser. We caught one of the hostel
mini buses to the hostel we were staying at 'The Friendly Hostel”.
The guy was lovely and
checked us in, we also got to use the free bikes they had and took
them down to the esplanade to have a look around.
When we got back we
booked a trip to Fraser Island with the hostel for the next day. It
was with a company called 'Unique Fraser' and lets say it was very
unique indeed. We were staying for 2 nights and 3 days.
In the morning we
waited to be picked up to be taken to where the trucks were. While we
were waiting we met another English couple who were staying in the
hostel and going on the same trip as us.
A woman came and picked
us up in a car, when we got there she took all of our details and
info.
We then had to watch a
video on health and safety on the island and stuff, bit boring but
had to be watched.
We were put into a
group of seven, James and Erica were in our group, 2 girls from the
Netherlands and a couple from Israel.
We were off to the
ferry then which took about half an hour to get to the island.
Once we arrived we went
for a fair bit of a drive (crazy as the whole island is thick sand)
until we reached a little campsite area where we went for a walk on a
boardwalk through a rainforest and then had lunch.
We had a bit of a drive
to get to the campsite we were staying at that night and had to go
through a resort. Once we had driven through the resort we came to
the beach which we had to drive across to get to the campsite.
We set our tents up and
had some goon (bad, cheap wine in a bag) and had a look around the
place and some of us went on the beach chatting and taking photos.
Soon it was dinner,
once again I was the only vegetarian in the group (more fish). It was
starting to get dark and since we weren't too far from the resort
which had a bar we all took a walk down the beach.
Some people had a few
to many drinks such as Matt and James who were doing stupid dances
and trying to sing to the songs, me and Erica just looked at each
other it was usual for both of us.
It started to rain a
bit and it was getting late so we all went back to the campsite, it
seemed a lot further on the way back. This time it was also pitch
back, we couldn't see anything without the torches. Unfortuantly the
boys had the torches and since they were in their funny mood decided
to turn them off and run away. The main reason for us being so scared
was of the dingoes!
Erica manged to find a
little lego man torch in her bag and we had to use that.
We kept hearing the
boys running around use and making weird noises, we knew it was them
but it was still terrifying – we legged it.
We finally got back to
the campsite which had light! We stayed up for some more cups of goon
and crashed ourselves into our tents, the lads stayed up a bit longer
talking to Chris the tour guide.
We were up early in the
morning to have breakfast and visit some of the places of the island.
On the island they have
these safety patrol officers who regularly check on the vehicles to
make sure they are road worthy and can handle the sandy roads.
They pulled us over on
our way further up the beach and checked the trucks over.
We were a bit worried
since 2 of the trucks, one of them we were driving, were quite old
and looked not to great, the other truck was fairly new.
They checked them all
over and ours had passed, then they got to the newer of the vehicles
and before we new it they stuck a sticker on it saying 'defective
vehicle'!
So we couldn't go
anywhere apart from the resort where we parked up while Chris had to
sort something out. There wasn't a mechanic on the island so we would
have to get another truck from the main land over on the ferry for us
to be able to go and that wouldn't be for another couple of hours.
Chris took our group
and the other group with a working truck to Lake McKenzie where we
would have to hang out for a while, it was about an hour drive to get
there. We just sunbathed and had a swim at the lake, the water was
lovely. It is one of the most famous and cleanest lakes in the world
so it was quite popular and a fair amount of people there.
Chris had to then go
back and get the others whos truck was clamped and brought them to
the Lake, he then took us to the campsite we were staying for the
evening. You can only have 8 people maximum in the truck so we
couldn't take any more people. He then went back to get the others
from the lake and bring them to the campsite, what a palaver.
We had a bit of a late
dinner because Chris had to wait until the other truck arrived at the
ferry terminal. While we waited we kept drinking our goon, it never
seemed to end (but that was because it was a 4l carton!).
We played cards and had
a good laugh after dinner chatting about what everyone's plans were
and where they were off to next.
We had to be up even
earlier the next morning since we missed a whole day and needed to
see the other sights on the island.
We had pancakes for
breakfast (my favourite) and cereal. We were a bit rushed so we had
to quickly get our tents down and packed away and get going.
We first went to a lake
called when we got there we saw 2 dingoes sitting in the shade next
to a toilet block, but when we started walking up there they ran off.
The walk to the lake
was long, we had to walk through a rainforest for a while and it was
hot! Eventually we got to some sand dunes we had to walk across, we
ran a lot since the sand was boiling. At the bottom of one of the
dunes was the lake, we got down and went for a swim.
Chris told us that this
lake killed more people than car accidents on the island, because
people would run from the top of the dune not realising the lake is
shallow and break their necks when they got to the bottom, so we
didn't do that.
After a good hour
chilling at the lake, we headed back to the 4x4s for what would be an
action packed day trying to cram everything in from the day we lost.
We went to Indian head for amazing views of 75 mile beach (the M1 of
the island) then we headed to the champagne pools for a dip and
finally to the Maheno shipwreck, which was blown ashore when the
cable being used to tow it to Japan snapped in bad weather, little
did they know that the Japanese were taking it there for scrap metal
to make tanks and bombs for the war. The Australian Air Force kept
the boat where it was and used it for target practice, unlucky Japan.
Then we started the
long drive back over the island to the ferry point and ended what was
an amazing but slightly hectic trip to the largest sand island in the
world. The Germans who had been inconvenienced by the defectiveness
of their van were not too happy and attempted to get a refund, let's
just say that 'Unique Fraser' were not the type of company to oblige
their request, and Fraser island does not seem to have been too kind
to the Germans or the Japanese, surely nothing more than a
coincidence........... :)
