How time flies…here we are in 2007, who would a thought such crazy things! We’ve just checked the site and there doesn’t seem to be a journal since the 17th December, we did do one for our Fraser Island trip, but I think somewhere along the way it’s been deleted!!!

So just before Christmas we visited the beautiful Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world - as you can see from the pictures it was an amazing place, and it was only accessible by 4 wheel drive. We were taken by Marty and Narelle (Andrew and Dean’s parents) for a 2 night mini adventure. We stayed in a 2 bed villa and being skint backpackers that we are we got the short straw, being given the kiddies room with 2 single beds!!! We were like a little family for a couple of days, Mum, Dad and 2 kids! Maybe we should have kept asking them for goodies and treats and saying ‘are we there yet?‘! Just to give u an idea, Fraser Island is about a 5 hour drive south towards Brisbane, and then from a place called Hervey Bay you have to get the car ferry across, which takes about 30 minutes.

Fraser is full of ‘natural’ entertainment…and by this I don’t mean nudists, but clear freshwater lakes, like Lake McKenzie, huge sand blows which cover a large proportion of the island, other smaller lakes, dingo’s, huge forests and lots of other cool stuff . It’s a ‘protected‘ national park so there isn‘t much development on the island, so there wasn’t much to do in the evening, but we had a great time. Whilst on the island Marty even let us drive his 4 wheel drive along the beach, luckily we didn’t crash it, although it wasn‘t like there was a lot of traffic!!!! We also saw on our travels a boat that had beached itself in 1935, it ran aground due to an unexpected cyclone, although there wasn’t really much of it left. Between Fraser and the mainland there is a part of the Capricorn straight in which the whales pass through, it would have been amazing to see but it wasn’t the right time of year, typical, but there were dolphins swimming just off the shore!!

On the way home from Fraser Marty and Narelle took us to Rainbow Beach, which is back on the mainland, where they have the coloured sands. The photo’s don’t really do it justice, but there were all sorts of colours amongst the sandbanks, it was really pretty. Much to Chris’ dismay Gem bought one of those glass pots filled with coloured sands, like the ones you get from the Isle of Wight…tacky as! We also stopped off at Lake Awoonga, this lake is quite possible the biggest lake we’ve ever seen, there’s quite a lot of huge lakes in Australia (not that many of them have water in???!) but it just puts it into perspective how huge this country really is!

So we get back from Fraser and Michelle and Stu have arranged to take us out to a town called Baralaba, which is about 2 hours from Yeppoon, but inland, and it’s way out in the bush. As you can see from the (rather drunken) photo’s there’s not really much to see apart from us in the pub! In Baralaba they have one pub slash hostel slash hotel, one shop, one mechanics garage, and not a lot else. Not far from here they have town called Woorabinda, an aboriginal town full of maniacs - think Paulsgrove but 100 times worse. Stu was going to take us to have a look, but apparently if u drive through it, especially as ‘tourists’, you’ll get stoned! We were rather disappointed about not being able to see it. Apparently they have 12 year old girls running around with baby’s, and no clothes or shoes. Stu also took us out to the coal mine which he works at, where u can see by the photo’s the vehicles are so big, its like toy cars for giants! We also met, at the pub some of his work friends, Mel some 50 year old dude, and Dallas who’s about 18 who kept buying everyone shots! It was really like something out of a western movie, way out in the bush! The pub even had the old saloon type swinging doors!

Still haven’t seen any snakes or spiders by this point, even way out in the middle of nowhere. But after an adventurous, and rather expensive week, we arrive home from Baralaba just in time for Christmas Eve!!!