After a humorous day or so in Agnes Water we were ready to sample the delights of Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. Now if you've read previous posts you may well be thinking to yourself - 'but Becca HATES sand, how is she going to cope with three full days with no respite?'. That would be a good question to ask, and I have to be honest it's not something I'd really considered when we booked it. BUT, never fear, it was such a fun three days I managed to forget about the sand and could almost imagine myself on soil, apart from the layer of sand between my socks and trainers that is still present now, four days since we left. Free exfoliation, woohoo.

Anyway, the trip itself was a three day, two night tag along self drive tour, something that was very important to me as I wanted to try my hand at driving on the sand with potential for a career move as stunt driver. But that is beside the point, the night before we set off we had a safety briefing and were put into our groups. Teams of 8 were assigned to each vehicle; Nina and I have been EXTREMELY lucky with all our tours in that our groups have been amazing and we've met some legendary characters, and this was no exception. I'll give you a quick rundown so you can judge for yourselves… If I tell you my nickname was Granny since I was the eldest it may give you an idea of the banter we had. Nina was 'brilliant' due to her overuse of the word which was picked up by Sam in approximately ten minutes of meeting her. Sam himself was from New York and I have booked myself a tour of the city when I'm there later in the year. His nickname was Sammy the salmon due to his love of 'the salmon dance' by The Chemical Brothers. Elbows, aka Gina from Vancouver, liked a handsome elbow, Frenchie, or Olivier, well I suppose you can guess where he was from and I am not exaggerating when I say he is one crazy individual and I have never met anyone so energetic in my life - he was like a puppy, so excited for everything. Cristina was from Switzerland but her parents were Syrian and Italian so I was a bit confused as to what nationality she is, anyway she was dubbed carrot girl due to her penchant for eating raw carrots whole, whipping one out to nibble on at the most inopportune moments, causing hilarity for everyone every time. The last two members of our team - 'Drunk Dingo' - were Nadia (mute) who was ill poor thing so was pretty quiet the entire time, and Louisa, a German girl who was nicknamed 'third gear' as a result of her complete inability to put the car in said gear managing to nearly stall it every time. Good job it was a diesel!

Introductions over, I can't move onto Fraser without at least giving the safety video a brief mention as it was central to our enjoyment of the trip. Said safety video was about 45 minutes long and detailed safe sand driving, good, nice and sensible, what to do if you see a dingo, how to prevent dingo attacks, how to dispose of human waste (if you're interested you need to dig a 50cm hole 50m from any running water source) and other bits and pieces like that. Now being the well behaved adults that we are when the guide asked what to do if you see a dingo we promptly crossed our arms over our chests and mimed walking backwards. To which the guide shouted 'Bulls***'. Unless dingos have a penchant for nipples crossing your arms over your chest won't do anything, you're best to shout and scare them away since it's all about being top dog with them (pun intended). After roundly debunking everything the video had told us and giving us alternative rules we were left wondering why on Earth we had just spent 45 minutes watching the damn thing! It did give us our theme of the trip though - Hungover? Move Over!! If pushed I'd say we yelled this at each other approximately 20-30 times a day. Nina even has a video of it somewhere.

Fast forward 12 hours and we've got up, had our free pancakes, picked up our food and sleeping bags, checked the 4x4 for scratches and stuff, packed the boot, plugged in the ipod and checked the seatbelts. Thus! We were ready for off. Or at least so we thought. Olivier was in the driving seat and having a hell of a time with his seatbelt - evidently his checking wasn't very thorough so we had to drive to the depot, unpack the red car, repack a green one and generally hold everything up for ten minutes, WOOPS! It was a good start though, brought the car together in united derision towards Olivier trying desperately to buckle up and failing miserably. It's lucky that boy can laugh at himself.

It was a short drive to the ferry, one of the cars still managed to get stuck in the sand pretty much straight away, I'm sure you can imagine everyone elses reactions, and there were some pretty red faces in the 4x4 when it arrived! Flying across the sand in the 4x4 was fun, my ipod blasting away with Sam playing DJ was a good way to start the three days, it must have been on this stretch when the salmon dance was discovered and kind of became an unofficial car theme song along with Chris Brown's 'yeah x3'. We trundled into our campsite - but were disappointed to find it wasn't camping but bunks, which wasn't what we were expecting! We came to the conclusion after driving through one of the campsites the next day that it must be a lottery as to which group out of the seven which go through Dingoes each week stays in the campsite or not. In the end up I was pretty glad we were in beds and not on the floor for many reasons - it was chuffing freezing at night, I would have been even sandier than I already was and our group got the only 8 bed room. It did also mean we didn't need to worry about dingoes stealing our food as the place was dingo-proofed with electrified cattle grid things to drive over to get in and lots of fences!

Once all the food and drink had been dropped off we drove over to Lake Mackenzie with yours truly in the driving seat. This drive was a little more difficult than just driving on the beach as it was the interior of the island with a fair bit of soft sand which is really easy to get stuck in, and a lot of hills and bumps. Really really good fun and extra exhilarating if you're in the driving seat. I didn't realise how much the sand pushes the 4x4 the opposite direction you want to go - it takes a fair bit of concentration.

Lake Mackenzie itself was beautiful , I've never seen such clear water in a lake setting, because the bed is white sand rather than dirty silt I think. Lake Mackenzie is a perched lake which means it is above sea level and the sand is almost pure silica so I gave my silver jewellery a nice clean! Some of the others went for a wander to another little beach around the side of the island, and Olivier came bounding back with a giant branch nicknamed his 'dingo stick' to scare the dingoes away in case our shouting didn't work. Luckily we didn't need to use it! We relaxed on the sand for a bit and dipped our toes in but it was chilly so didn't jump right in, before going back to the 4x4 for a quick drive to Central Station, part of what used to be a logging companies main work area but which is now a historical area on the island. There was a short walk through some rainforest - one of the trees bark inspired the Aussie army uniform pattern apparently - but there was nothing out of the ordinary apart from the fact the trees are all growing out of sand! Something to do with some fungus in the sand that carries nutrients or something. I'm not sure what exactly fuel pumps look like in the US but Sam seemed to think the one left over from the logging company was a bee catcher…I was speechless before convulsing with laughter.

Early evening found us back at camp having some goon on the beach, watching the sun set over the sea and playing the dingo drinking game, which basically consisted of drinking every time we saw a dingo. Sadly it wasn't as good a game as we might have hoped since we didn't see that many dingoes but it was a good team bonding sesh! After cooking some food our group just hung out with music and drinks having a laugh - it ended up being pretty late but I stayed relatively clear headed since only 5 of us could drive the car - and 3 of the others were wasted. Hungover? Move Over!

The morning dawned with a few sore heads so after breakfast we jumped in the 4x4s - Louisa's turn to drive and struggle with third gear - and headed over to Eli Creek, a freshwater creek which cuts through the sand to the sea. On the way we drove past a dead whale which had beached itself trying to catch fish in high tide. Apparently sharks do this sometimes as well so we were recommended not to go in the sea - the riptides are really powerful too so it's dangerous in more ways than one. Once we had ogled the unfortunate creature for long enough we carried on to Eli Creek. We had a bit of a paddle, it was actually surprisingly warm. Lazing around by the creek reading my book was a good way to spend half an hour, but then Sam wanted to do some 'activities' (he loves activities!) so we buried Olivier in the sand, like you do. Rather him than me though it looked pretty itchy! Once he had dusted himself off we headed down the beach towards the S.S Maheno, a shipwreck on the beach which used to be a passenger ship and crashed when it was being towed for scrap. Apparently the Australian Air Force used the wreck as target practice as well, they can't have been that accurate though since there was still most of the boat left…apart from that there isn't much to say about it, it was very rusty but not a particularly exceptional vessel.

Next it was over to Indian Head, the highest point of the island, to get some photos and appreciate the view. The breeze was pretty refreshing up there too haha.

Our last stop of the day was the champagne pools, a misnomer if ever there was one as there were no bubbles, and Olivier was most upset there wasn't real champagne! They are quite unusual though, huge rock pools with white sandy bottoms and, like everywhere else on the island, water so clear you think you could drink it. Would be pretty salty though 555. Now it might sound like we didn't really do much on the island on the day, but the driving times between places are surprisingly long and as I did a lot of the driving with Louisa I was pretty tired by the end of the day. Nina had the worst hangover I think she has ever had from the goon so we hung out with everyone for a few hours after tea but snuck out for an early bedtime. Living up to my granny moniker!

Our last day on Fraser was relatively short since there was a lot of driving to do to get back to the 2pm ferry, so in the morning we drove over to Lake Wabby, a lake created by sand blows blocking off part of a creek over thousands of years. It was pretty eerie, we walked through a nice little woodland to get to it and you reach it from a big sand dune which drops off straight into the water. The water itself is dark green (imagine the blue lagoon but cleaner) since it reaches 12 metres at its deepest and is a real contrast to the white sand and tropical trees surrounding it.

The trip ended with me driving back to the ferry, blasting out salmon dance, bohemian rhapsody and don't stop me now on the way, a classic end to a classic trip! AND I managed not to crash, get bogged down, kill anyone or run over a dingo. All in all a great success.

To cement our new found friendships we all went out for tea in the evening before having a few drinks in the bar and watching Joel, our trip leader, do a gig (he was very good). It was sad saying bye to everyone but Nina and I did get on the same bus as Sam and Olivier to Brisbane so we got to extend our time together, which basically consisted of us all sleeping for 5 hours! The highlight of the bus trip HAD to be meeting Matilda, a giant kangaroo which was created for the Commonwealth games in 1988 or something. It was very creepy, she turns her head and winks every 5 minutes the big flirt.

Thus ended the last of our major trips in Australia. The rest of our time here will be spent in cities and driving around in a campervan, a prospect which excites me immensely although I'm not sure about the cold nights. That's all content for another blog post though.

Becca x