whitsunday islands

rob_hoeks — Sun, 3 Jun 2007 12:47:00 GMT

After fraser island we went, with the night bus to airley beach. a fun thing about a night bus is, although you sleep in it, you don't rest at all! the day after we arrived we sailed out on a ship called the hammer. this is an ex-racing yacht, which was pretty cool. the waters around the whitsunday island so that ment we could do a lot of snorkeling.so i went finding nemo, couldn't find him though, but saw lots of his friends!the second day of sailing took us to white heaven beach, this is really beautifiul, even thoough it was pissing down! there were also turtles in the water over there!

the day we went back we went to "beaches", because there was some free beer!but, everybody was pretty tired so we went back at 11.Only to find Helena en Jenny(who we met on fraser) in the hostel whith whom we ended up in another bar agian. so after all it still was 4 am before i was in bed!

and after the whitsundays, well, time to work, i've got a job in brisbane now. I work as an electrician/electrical engineer for IGS, an geotechnical company.It's a really fun and good job, and it keeps me travelling!

see ya, rob

Gallery: whitsundays

rob_hoeks — Sun, 3 Jun 2007 12:27:00 GMT

whitsunday islands

Fraser island

rob_hoeks — Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:09:00 GMT

I arrived three days prior to my trip to Fraser island in hervey bay,thinking that there should be something to do in hervey bay. Boy was i wrong. Hervey bay turned out to be a boring little place. the only reason to go there is to get the ferry to Fraser island.

But you have to do something there, so i went to the beach. The beach wasn't that bad but swimming was out of the question. the water was way to shallow and there were al kinds of "locals" in the water you don't want to meet. When i was just knee deep in the water i already saw a baby shark and a few (sting)ray's.

And then, finally the trip to fraser began. Immediately had a good start, i was driving the 4 wheel drive(although my first few feet weren't that good...)We were first driving through town, getting some groceries and making our way to the ferry. After the ferry ride, it was time for some serious off roading :-). The first part on the island was straight through the rainforest so that was quiet bumpy.after that, the flat beach? well, you couldn't really call it flat, ok, it wasn't as bumpy as the rainforest but it was nowhere near a normal road either.

We drove to indian head and the champagne pools. indian head was really cool, you could see shark(s) from there and ray's! the champagne pools are called like that because the waves hit the rocks, splash over the rocks and " bubble" in to the pools. it really looks like champaign if you're in there(mind you, it doesn't taste like champagne at all!) And there were also heaps of prety little fish! after the pools we went to our campsite--> camping on the beach! for dinner we had a barbie,and after that it was time to bring the alcohol out!because it was already pitch black at 6 pm, we were already pretty pissed at 22 so everybody went to bed "early".

The second day we went to Eli creek. This is the biggest freshwater stream on fraser.THe funny thing is, that if you walk upstream, you can let yourself just floatback to the beach! We also went to lake wabby, this is an (emerald) green freshwater lake, whith huge snaddunes next to it! the dunes were pretty steep, the lake bottom was pretty steep as well so it was perfectly" safe" to run down the hill and jump in (watch out for faceplanting yourself in the dune though)!

The third we woke up and.... found out that our campsite was raided by dingos.On fraser island there are heaps of dingos and they're not really shy! and because we left some stuff out, the dingos had a feast while we were sleaping, after cleaning that up, we went to central station. This was an old logging station. We saw a pretty big goanna there and we had a nice walk through the rainforest. After that it was time for lake mackenzie. This lake is absolutely magnificent, clear white sand, blue water, green surroundings.... we were there the rest of the day untill it was time to head back to the ferry.

back in Hervey bay we finished the trip with a dinner at a local irish bar.

some interesting facts about fraser(at least, i think there interesting)

it is the biggest sand island in the world.
beautifull lakes to swim in
very dangerous ocean to swim in(sharks, current, jellyfish...)
dingos roam the island, not scared of humans at all
although it exist only of sand, it has some beautiful rainforest

se ya, rob

Gallery: fraser island

rob_hoeks — Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:04:00 GMT

travelling oz

whitsunday islands

Gallery: whitsundays

Fraser island

Gallery: fraser island