A sad day came.... The day we had to say goodbye again to Amber & Tom! After nearly a month of travelling together we felt like a little family! So we decided to go for the most northern goodbye we could think of.... A Pie for dinner!

With Great Keppel Island on our minds, we were ready to get away from THE TRAVELLERS for a few days!
Today's bite your tongue moments:

NUMBER 1 - Two 'pretend' smelly hippies ask to borrow a splash of oil... "Of course you can!" We reply.... Soon after they drag out a huge pan of pancake mix, using copious amounts of oil for each one. With a shop a 2 minute walk away...they are obviously just after a free ride! But not on our oil their not!! The conversation went like this....
Matt: You finished with that oil mate?
Hippie: (In broken German/English accent) I need to use oil for every pancake!
Matt: (Turned away for 2 seconds out of pure anger and disgust) You have finished! Thank you!
Hippie: (Stood looking badly done to) Ok!

The rest of breakfast was spent calming down! We aren't here to fund their travelling too!! We are all for working together and sharing but THEY were really grinding our gears. We are sure you can imagine the type, not washed for days, black feet, wearing oversized ponchos, multicoloured baggy pants, stig of the dump hair and for most of the day they stand there practising swinging poles and socks around their heads! (Like a terrible fire show with no fire!) You don't have to look like this to be a traveller, come on you get a free shower included!!

NUMBER 2 - After a few days at Fraser Island sitting round a camp fire we needed to get some clothes washed quickly before catching our bus. So we pay for a wash and then for the dryer. Not wanting to hold anyone up, Matt sets an alarm on his phone for when the dryer would be finished. By track record the clothes normally need to be in the dryer for 2 cycles, so we walk in to pop it on again just as the first has finished, to find A GERMAN girl popping her washing in. The conversation went as follows -
German: Your dryer has finished and your clothes are on the side.
Char: Is it dry? It needed to be in twice!
German: I don't know but it had finished.
Char: (With disgust felt the clothes) They are still wet!! (Being polite) We will just wait for another one!

Seriously some people are so stupid! What did she think we were going to do with wet clothes!!!! After she walked out we looked at each other and discussed why we were being so polite to complete space cadets!

Then something dawned on us as she walked out.... Were all our clothes even there? With a quick count Char realised she was missing some underwear! With anger we pulled open the dryer and there they were mixed in with her clothes! Wanting to check for anything else we piled all her stuff onto the side and there were some more! It soon became clear why she may (hopefully it was a mistake!) have wanted some of Char's underwear as it was hard to ignore her array of soiled knickers!

None of the dryers were due to finish in time for us to catch our bus, leaving us with 2 bags of wet clothes! Karma (Matt) swooped in throwing our clothes back in and saying it was tuff and he would leave her the $4 on the side! However....after 10 more minutes ours were dry and we were both just fuming with the aliens we were meeting. We took our clothes out, threw hers back in and walked out with dry clothes in our bags, our $4 on our pocket and an oblivious German that we hope we don't meet again!!

After a 2hour bus journey to Hervey Bay we had a 4hour wait for our next bus so we:
- Walked around the ghost town
- Had 3 pizzas (As usual Matt's eyes are bigger than his belly)
- Gave the rest of the pizza to a homeless man
- Saw the giant whale
- Used McDonald's free wifi while dragging out a coffee for 2 hours!
- Booked a 4 berth campervan for $2 a day for 6 days which comes with a free tank of fuel for our trip back down the coast!
- Booked our Perth flights to visit Mel & Lorna in July
- Bumped into Billy from Frasers again!!

We boarded our next bus to Rockhampton into the night but after a snorer, watching a taxi driver being abused by two out of it aboriginals we arrived at a dark hostel and hoped that we wouldn't upset our room mates with our 3am arrival....
AN EMPTY QUIET 4 bed dorm! It couldn't have come at a better time!

M & C xxxx