27/01//09

We had to get up at 6, pack all our things and head off to the meeting at 0630. Basically the entire meeting was just telling us to be Dingo safe and informing us how to pack the 4x4 safely and drive it properly. Just before we were about to leave we were told that all drivers must wear shoes, so everyone had to dig out their shoes from the back of the storage room. The guy showing us how to change from 4wd to 2wwd couldn't get the gear back in to the 2wd position so we had to wait for a mechanic to show up to ram it back in. We finally set off at just after 9 and got onto the 0930 ferry. The guy that guided us on to the ferry was a complete dick, he wore a Transformers belt and was possibly the rudest person I have ever met, absolute b******.

The first stop was the rainforest walk, which was the most pointless stop ever, every group just walked from one end to the other as fast as possible then got back in the car. I drove to Lake Birrabean, which had to be the most bumpy ride ever, some of the tree roots we had to drive over were massive. Lake Birrabean was awesome, the water was warm and clear, and the sun was out. Pat, Helen and I attempted to get a 3 person shoulder stack on the go, with no luck, then we decided to have shouler wars, Helen went down like a sack of s*** and Coops and I were proclaimed the winners. While all this was going on everyone noticed that there were 3 Brazilian girls not joining in with anyone, they were just all standing by the waters edge in bikinis, brushing their hair, then doing the same catalogue pose each and taking hundreds of photos. We then left and Emma drove to the next spot where we saw a couple of Salamanders and had sandwiches for lunch. The lake here was filled with tea tree oil which made it look very red, so not as good as birrabean. We then headed towards the beach, past Dilli village which consisted of like 3 buildings. When we made it on to the beach the driving got much harder, we weren't allowed to drive anywhere near the sea due to the salt water, so there was really deep sand where we were driving making the car slip from side to side.

We finally made it to the camp site and spent an hour or so pissing around on the beach playing keepie ups and stuff while we got acquainted with all the members of our group. We seemed to have a really friendly bunch, there were us 5, Emma a crazy girl from Kent, 2 Swiss blokes, Marco and Manuel, 2 Canadians, Ben and Jen and a Swede called Hanah. We then started to pitch our tents, and I found out that Coops had never actually slept in a tent before and had no idea how to pitch one, we were sharing with Hanah, who seemed to know everything there was to know about everything, but was also always hungry, so she gave me very detailed instructions on how to erect a tent. While we were putting the tent up everyone noticed there were these massive flies that kept landing ont them, then after a while it felt like they were injecting you, so annoying, they just wouldn't leave us alone all night.

The weather had been good all day, but we were told it would rain during the night, so the girls decided to try and make some kind of canopy out of the ground sheet. The way they did it was so retarded, they put the 4 corners of the sheet through the windows at the top of the 2 vans, but spent about an hour trying to positions the vans in place first. When they finished it was so saggy, only Helen and I could stand underneath it, possibly the worst canopy ever. Meanwhile, all the lads were attempting to cook sausages on the camp stove we were issued. The other 2 groups had managed to cook their meals while we were still waiting for some spuds to fry on the BBQ, the genious idea of Hanah the Swedish girl. After a while we realised that our stove was an absolute heap of s***, the flames given off by our hobs were tiny compared to the other group. It was also really dangerous, the gas hose had a leak in it, so when the wind blew the flame anywhere near the hose it would set fire so we had to quickly run toward the bottle and turn it off. After hours of trying to cook our food as 1 big group the other group had all cooked pretty much individually on theirs so we borrowed their stove and instantly heard sausages sizzling.

when we'd finished eating we wanted to sit outside and drink some goon, so the girls canopy ended up being torn down to sit on. We played Up Down River, 5's and 7's and the Name Game until everyone was pretty battered. Manuel was well funny at 5's and 7's, for some reason every round would finish on him getting stuck on 22. Manuel and Marco, the two Swiss blokes were pretty funny at the name game as well, they spoke really good English, sounded like they were educated at boarding school or something, they sounded well posh. They were coming out with things like Wobby Williams and WilLIAM Gallager. It started raining later on in the night so we all piled in to the back of the van to carry on drinking before heading to the beach when the rain stopped to check out the stars. There were so many stars visible, it was awesome. Emma was a bit wasted and initiated a streak along the beach, then came back and started dancing around with the speaker on her head going nuts for the rest of the night. We made it to bed at some point, but none of us had a sleeping bag so we had to make do with whatever clothes we had in our bags.

28/01/09

Woke up and laid on the beach until about 10 recovering from last night, then we spent ages trying to de-sand the cutlery before packing everything back in the van and leaving for Indian Head. It was a 2 hour drive which Emma, Rich and I shared. It was quite fun driving through the sand and wash outs. On the way we had a bit of an incident involving a giant wasp and Ben, it flew in the window and he went completely crazy, flailing his arms around all over the place before picking up his bag with both hands and ramming it in to the window, we had to pull over to let the thing out, it was then that his manorisms went hand in hand with his ear ring and everyone placed him as gay.

When we arrived we weren't sure if we were in the right place, and at this point Pat had just taken control of the car, he attempted driving through some really deep sand and we stopped pretty soon after he entered it, after about 10 attempts at pulling away again and stalling each time Emma decided to take control, but was sat there with her foot on the clutch in 4WD for ages and very nearly burnt out the clutch. After a while we managed to push the car out back on to the beach, then we all hiked to the top of the cliff to check out the view. It was awesome, I sat on top of the cliff and managed to spot 2 baby Tiger Sharks and a Turtle swimming around, a couple of guys noticed a dolphin and a fully sized shark but I missed those. When we headed back down we drove back towards the Maheno wreck to take some photos, we saw a giant jelly fish on the ground as we hopped out of the van and I stood on what we now believe were Portugese men of War that were littered all over the shore. The Brazillians took the oppertunity to do their hair again and get another load of photos in. One of the signs on the wreck informed us that climbing on the wreck would result in a Maximum penalty of 50 penalty units, whatever that means.

Our next stop was Eli Creek, as we were driving we saw something coming towards us, it was a bit big to be a van or a bus, when it got a little closer we realised it was an aeroplane, so we quickly got out of the way of it and it took off right in front of us on the beach. I don't think I'll ever have to give way to a plane again in my life. When we arrived at Eli creek Hanah was getting pretty hungry so we decided to have some sandwiches. We chose a spot on the beach in the shade, a bad idea, as we have all now had real SANDwiches. The wind picked up and blew sand all over the meats, bread and in the tub of spread. They were the most gritty sandwiches I have ever eaten. Manuel dropped his slice of meat right in the sand and rinsed it in the creek, as he was doing it 3 Japanese girls all burst out laughing and took loads of photos of him, then as he was going to put it back in the bread he dropped it right in the sand again and had to go for a second rinse.

We decided to go to the nearest shop to fill up our water bottles, on the way we were going down a really bumpy road and found a crate with 9 2 litre bottles of milk in that had clearly fallen off the back of a delivery truck. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to take as much of it as we could, so we filled the Esky with about 6 of the bottles and passed another around to drink. We got to the town and pretty much everyone got some form of ice-cream and took a photo of the Animals crossing sign which had a picture of a Duck and a Turtle, then we headed off to Lake Wabby. It was a 35 minute hike from the beach to the lake, but was totally worth it. It was another beautiful lake with a massive sand dune down one side of it which we all proceeded to run up and then run down as fast as we could and try not to break our necks as we hit the water at the bottom. We spent about an hour swimming around and freaking out the girls by telling them that there crocs and anacondas in the water then swimming around their legs. We then tried to spell Wabby out of our body shapes so Burns could take a photo from the top of the dune, I thougt we did a pretty good job but Burns had no idea what was going on. We had to get back to the camp site before 5 or we wouldn't make it due to the tide, so we hurried back and managed to get there at about half 4.

This time we thought we'd start cooking nice an early as the stove was so s***. As we opened the meat esky we realised that the milk had leaked all over everything so we gave it all a rinse and then used the milk bottles to weigh down a sheet next to the van and stove to prevent the wind from blowing the flames out. We started off cooking onions and after 20 minutes the butter had just about melted. Another hour passed and the onions nearly started to brown off on one side, so Manuel got his Season All out and started sprinkling it all over. After about another hour we had come to the conclusion that our stove was actually a heap of s***, so we waited for the other group to finish theirs and nicked it, then the cooking started. We put 2 kilos of mince on the BBQ and Ben did his best to cook it all, while we tried to cook like 3 kilos of spaghetti. Eventually it was ready so we dished it up, I have never had such a sandy meal in my life, for some reason I ended up with about 50% sand and 50% spag bol. Coops couldn't finish hers so offered it to Burns who refused to eat it because it was 'sandy', I finished it off, it was heaven compared to the s*** I had to deal with. Pat, Burns and I attempted to dispose of the excess spaghetti in a 'Dingo Safe' way, so I dug a deep hole and we poured it in, it sounded like someone vomiting when it hit the floor, then Manuel rushed over to add some season-all to it just in case the Dingos found it.

We spent the rest of the night all sitting on the beach chatting and looking up at the stars. We saw about 5 shooting stars during the night, then Emma started to go a bit hyper again. She was holding the wind-up torch and playing torch charades with it. Her first one was 'What am I' then she held it above her head, apparently she'd had an idea. The game continued with things like shooting stars, light sabers, the British Gas thumb, the lottery finger and all sorts. The game then shifted into jump into the spot light which I don't think anyone managed to do so the torch was put down. A game of imitate an animal then ensued to which Manuel was again the best, with his Chicken and Horse impressions. I struggled to sleep when we retired to the tent, I swear the tent had shrunk becuase my head and feet were now touching each end of it and the wind was blowing so hard that it was banging me in the head all night.

29/01/09

I was 'woken' at 5am by Coops alarm going off. I say woken, I was more reminded of the time as I couldn't sleep due to the noise of the wind pummeling the tent and the bumpy sand under the tent. I got up and walked outside, the sun was just about rise so I picked a perfect spot on the beach and watched, it was magnificent, so big in the sky and instantly lit up and warmed everything on the beach. During the sun rise a Dingo trotted out of the camp and walked just along side me. We spent about half an hour packing all the crap away, once again attempting to rinse the sand off the cutlery, plates and mugs, which were now so encased in multiple layers of grease and sand they sounded like someone tearing velcro apart when stacked together. We couldn't take the milk with us so we ended up pouring it all down a crabs hole, probably not the most Dingo safe thing to do but at least we confused a crab which popped its head out as if to say 'what the f*** is going on here?'

We finally managed to pack all the s*** away and so set off to find Lake McKenzie. To begin with we followed group A all the way to where the shop was yesterday before realising that we must have gone the wrong direction, so we chased each other around the beach in the sand carving out giant perfect circles before heading back the way we came. We spotted what we thought was the turning and stopped but the other group was just out of honking range and they didn't turn round so we proceeded alone. All was going perfectly well and I was loving driving round some seriosly bumpy roads when I heard and 'Uh, Oh!' from the back so I stopped concentrating on the bumps and looked up, there was a fallen tree crossing the road. It took just about all of us to lift and move the tree to the side of the road before we could continue. We finally arrived at Lake McKenzie about 10 minutes after A got there, on arrival I realised my anti-jellyfish sun cream had exploded all over my hat. It is the most beautiful lake ever, it has its own beaches and lush forest all around. We were all nackered so we had a bit of a rest there for a few hours. After a while we went for a swim, it was so nice, crystal clear water so clear you could drink it. Further out it got really deep so we had competitions on how deep we could swim. I eventually got a bit bored and decided to swim to the other side of the lake. It didn't look too far, but it took me forever, the current in the lake was pushing me back so every 3 strokes I took equated to about 1 normal stroke, luckily that meant an easy swim back.

We drove back to central station to cook the rest of our now milk covered meat for lunch, on the way listening to as many David Hasselhoff songs from Marco's iPod as possible, Jump in my Car has to be the best. We had a steak each which seemed fine, the burgers weren't too great though, no one could figure out what they were supposed to be, they looked like vegie burgers, but had bits of bone in them. We yet again rinsed the plates and cutlery and then Burns, Manuel, Simon and I played frisbe until it was time to leave for the barge. When we got there, group C's van had broken down while in the queue to get on, they eventually managed to get it started though. We couldn't move the gear stick out of 4WD, so when we got to the other side we tried phoning Koalas but we had no signal. We drove to the nearest payphone, the woman at reception told us that in no circumstances were we to drive the car on the road in 4WD as it completely ruins the vehicle. So we quickly turned the car around and got back to the ferry car park before the mechanic showed up. When he finally did show up it was just a matter of shoving the gear stick as hard as you could. So off we set to drive back to the hostel, after about 2 minutes we heard a loud grinding noise and then what sounded to me like a broken exhaust. We were now screwed on the side of the road with no phone signal or pay phone. Luckily the mechanic was driving back the same way about 10 minutes later and spotted us so sorted us out with a new car to drive back whilst he drove the incredibly noisy one with the broken exhaust.

We eventually made it back to the hostel and they made us wash everything up 1 last time before letting us go. All I wanted to do was jump in the pool and wash the sand off but a sign was up telling us that chemical cleaning was in progress. We checked in for the night, during which time a bloke came up to us and told us all about some free drinks and sausages for backpackers down the road. Bonus! We had to endure some Christian preaching to us, but we all got a sausage out of it. We headed back and turfed pretty much all our clothes into a giant heap to be washed, then showered and met the rest of our group back at reception at 7 to go eat something. Most people ended up with a kebab, I had fish and chips, the best fish I've had all travels.

We then went back to the hostel and had a few drinks to spend some more time with our group as we had all had such a good time the past couple of days and all got on so well. The girls, Pat and Jen went to bed early and the rest of us went to the bar round the corner. Marco and Manuel had sleeping bags with them, Manuel ended up getting in his sleeping bag in the middle of the bar, priceless. Emma had a go on a couple of pokies and managed to win like 30 bucks so got a couple more jugs in before we said bye to MnM and then went back home. After 10 minutes in bed I had been bitten about a million times and couldn't sleep, this has to be the most itchy I have ever been, it feels awful, it's impossible to sit still let alone sleep!