An early start for us today as we had to check out at 7am. It took quite a while to sort everything out before we left - it was mostly the food we had to sort; each group had to check they had everything in their boxes that was on the list! Luxuries included corned beef (which was nothing like the corned beef we know), steaks and 'Asian sauce' for our chicken stir-fry! After our guide Wayne helped us to pack everything into eskis (cool boxes) we eventually packed up the 4 trucks in the rain, and worked out where we were all going to sit. There were 7 people in our truck - us, a couple called Simeon and Catriona from London, and 2 Irish girls called Elizabeth and Mary, and only me, Kelly and Simeon were drivers.

Simeon volunteered to drive first and I sat next to him in what looked like a nice comfortable passenger seat…until Dave came to say that he had to sit there too as there were only 4 seats in the back and it was actually meant for 2 people!! The short drive through town took us to the garage where the trucks were from, and we had a bit of a pep talk/lecture from the manager. Basically, the gist of it was don't crash the truck and everyone get along!

After another short drive we arrived at the barge which was going to ferry us over to the island. It was a very informal operation. You just wait on the sand until it gets there and it runs on an on demand basis. Once we arrived on the Island (it was still raining) we drove for around half an hour up the 'motorway' (aka the East Beach!) to our campsite at the side of the beach. The drive was quite interesting as the tide was quite high so we had to try and avoid the waves without steering too sharply, otherwise we could roll over, which apparently happens a lot!

Luckily, when we arrived at the campsite the rain had stopped so we were able to complete our next challenge without getting wet. And that challenge was…putting up our tents! Neither of us has put up a tent before so it was quite a stressful operation, but we got there in the end with some help from our fellow campers.

Our first scenic spot of the day was beautiful Lake McKenzie and it was my turn to drive…driving a new vehicle is one thing, but driving a 4WD for the first time with 6 passengers is quite an experience! It wasn't as bad as I expected though, and I got into negotiating the off road tracks and even managed to avoid some big puddles along the way! When we arrived at Lake McKenzie the sun was shining so everyone changed into swimwear and we spent about an hour in the crystal clear freshwater lake. We persuaded our driver Wayne to take a group photo on the beach. He wasn't impressed when he was handed about 20 cameras, but a lady came to help him.

We swapped drivers again - Simeon took over as Kelly wasn't feeling too confident, and drove a little further to a short rainforest walk where Wayne showed us a map of the Island and pointed out where we would be visiting on the trip. He also pointed out some of the plants and trees native to the Island, including the world's largest fern.

On the way back to camp we stopped in the small village of Eurong for a toilet stop (no toilets at the campsite) and to visit the shop which was quite expensive ($6 for a pack of biscuits!). Back at camp everyone started drinking their beers and goon while sheltering from the rain under the canopy of our 'dining area'. We had to organise and cook our own dinner, but luckily quite a few people started sorting it out so we stayed out of it as it was beginning to be a case of 'too many cooks'. We spent the rest of the night drinking our goon and talking to some of the others. We met a Capital FM DJ from Essex who used to live with Jeremy Kyle for 6 months. None of us could beat that! We retired to our tent quite early as we were tired out after day 1 on Fraser Island!