We arrived into Hervey Bay and yet again it was raining, hopefully this wet weather cannot continue all the way up the coast!! We packed our bags in readiness for a 6am start on our Fraser Island 3 day/2 night self-drive tour.

We were up early and met our group of 10 (it was a tight squeeze in the back of the 4WD) we had a really good group 5 English (including us), 2 German, a Brazilian, an American and a Canadian. We all got on well so we were excited about our weekend away. We went to go and pick up our camping gear before heading to the supermarket to go and buy the food for the weekend. After squashing everything in we went to get the barge across to Fraser Island.I had to reverse the van onto the ferry, which was fun! At least it wasn't raining at this point, we thought we may be lucky with the weather, although there were some very threatening clouds heading in our direction! We headed across Fraser Island to the 75 mile Eastern Beach, the track over Fraser Island was great fun to drive across, single track and parts were pretty steep and bumpy.

When we got to the beach we headed north to find Eli Creek and the Maheno shipwreck. Eli Creek was gorgeous, the water was so clear, we saw an eel swimming along the water. If only the weather had been better, it would have been lovely to float along wasting the day away!! The shipwreck was massive and rusty too, must have been there for a while. It had started to rain so we only had quick stops before heading off to find somewhere dry for lunch and to find a good campsite where we could put up tarps to keep the rain out.

We were lucky when looking for a campsite, we found a little clearing in the middle of a few trees and rigged up some tarps (getting very wet in the process) so we had somewhere dry to sit for the evening - it was a massive relief to be sat in the dry (we were the only group to stay completely dry!) We had a BBQ and then drinking games to pass the evening. We were all pretty drunk by the time we went to sleep, particularly Sarah and Claire!

We were up pretty early the next morning with a collective set of hangovers (some people were worse than others - Sarah and Claire!!) and cleared the campsite before walking to Indian Head. According to our itinerary the walk should have taken about 45 minutes, however an hour and a half and over 7km later we arrived. There were great views from the top, the beach looked as though it went on forever, we even saw some small sharks in the waters below. As we were now quite a way from our van a couple of us hitched a lift back to it before picking everybody up and going to see Champagne Pools. They were beautiful, a rocky area which filled with salt water as the waves came over, a great way to cool off after the long walk!

We then headed to Lake Wabby, a fresh water lake in the middle of some golden sand dunes which was lovely, although the water was quite green and slimy!We camped tonight again on the beach with two of the other groups, so we had a big camp set up.We took things a bit easier tonight, had yummy spag bol for dinner and played a few games of cards.We had a few Dingoes sniffing around our camp site all evening.They can be very aggressive so we had to keep our distance, these ones were just pushing their luck for some free food!

We did something very silly tonight though, as our little light was broken we left our lights on the jeep so we could see to cook, resulting in a completely flat battery!So the next morning we had to call a mechanic to give us a jump start.There was no chance in bump starting it on the soft sand!

The last day was definitely the highlight.We had gorgeous weather, blue sky and bright sunshine and we went to Lake Mackenzie, a beautiful clear fresh water lake with white sand! It was pretty busy and we bumped into Rich and Dan (the lads from Sheffield) and Rob, Denise and Orlaith (the Irish Guys from Byron Bay!) Such a small world!We had a lazy few hours sunbathing (getting very sunburnt!) and swimming before heading back to the barge.Sarah drove us back, she did well as it was quite a difficult bit with steep up and downhills.

We got back to Hervey Bay about 6pm, had to unpack the jeep and tidy everything away before we could clean ourselves up and survey the sunburn damage!Most of our group went out for dinner to celebrate a great trip and finished the night with a few drinking games - it would be rude not too!

We have had a great few days, really tiring, being with a large group in close proximity and having to drive, decide what to see, set up camp, cook, etc but really good fun!Today we are checking our Hervey Bay, getting ourselves stocked up on sunscreen before we head up the coast tonight on a 13 hour bus to Airlie Beach and The Whitsundays - lazing around on a boat here we come!

Take Care

A&S xxx