Well, I am now sat in Brisbane airport and my flights doesn’t leave for about 4 hours. . . .hhmmmmm, nice?! However, I have just had an awesome time at Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island! I know I keep saying wow and that I cannot stop smiling, but it’s true. . . . Life is so good!

So, for all the stories then. . . . . Where do I start? Erm, I left Airlie as said at 6ish and set off on my 16 hour bus journey down to Rainbow Beach. . . The journey was ok, I slept a lot of the way and got to Dingos Backpackers at around 10am, got checked in, dumped my bag and jumped in the pool. . . . Then I thought I would check the place out, so wandered down to the beach, down the one main street with about 15 shops on it. . . The beach was nice, with good waves crashing in. . . . Which was clearly too inviting, so without hesitation I was in amongst it. . . I then fell asleep on the beach for an hour or so and pretty much chilled out for the day, til our 4 o clock meeting about Fraser Island. . . . I was due the next day to go on a 3 day 2 night self drive 4 x 4 expedition. . . . !

So we had the meeting, got put in our groups (My new family for the next 3 days) and oh yeah, I had a few beers! We did all that, the paperwork stuff, signing your life away, ordered the booze, etc, then we hit the beers some more. I instantly clicked with a guy called Pete from North London. He was in another group, but I think we just got hammered together, shared all our stories and played pool, spoke to everyone, which we later found out and just basically had a great night!

In the morning, bright an early, I was up and about and with my team getting the truck sorted, etc. . . . Pete however was still in bed, so some of his group had to go and find him and wake him up! Good start Pete. . . . . They learnt to love him later though! We had all the briefings and in our group of 10, about 5 or 6 put down to drive. . . . I had offered, but wasn’t that bothered. . . Being the oldest and most responsible, I was voted to drive first! So got sorted and the convoy of 6 trucks headed off. . . We took a short ferry ride over to the Island and hit the sand. . . Blimey, this was not gonna be easy!

Now Fraser Island is the biggest sand Island in the world, it has rainforests, natural springs and lots and lots and lots of sand (It get everywhere and I mean everywhere!).

Now like I said, I was driving first and we got the first obstacle as the tide was higher than desired, it was a fallen tree and we needed to get round it and to do so, I had to time my run through the water with the waves crashing in. . . . hmmmm, nice! I haven’t driven for over 3 months and now needed to do this. . . Obviously everything was ok and we headed off up the Island to the first Stop ‘Eurong’, to get some more Ice and go to the loo, etc! The driving up there was hard, very tiring as you really needed to concentrate. At this point I don’t think anyone wanted to drive!

We then went off up to Lake Makenzie, which was a fair distance away and inland through some really dense rainforest. . . It was fun, but yeah, hard work. I got us there without crashing, the team seemed more than happy with my driving and we were all smiling, even more so when we saw the lake. It was beautiful, with brilliant white sand! We stayed there for a few hours and had lunch, etc before heading off to the first place we had decided to camp at. . . On the way back through the rainforest (which happened to be around 30km round trip in treacherous driving conditions) we got to a fallen tree across the road, so had to back up and go the wrong way down the one way bit that we had come up earlier. . . . Crazy!

We got to camp first and I got the rest of the trucks in and the party begin. . . . Everyone cracked their beers open, put some music on and started to set up camp. . . . We had some tents to share, loads a food, cooking equipment, etc. . . . So for dinner we made sautéed oniony potatoes and get this. . . . Steak! Tons of the stuff. . . . I helped cook, well cooked the meat and made sure that we did it in the right order so we could all eat together. We did, everyone was happy and very much appreciative of me for driving all day, being a good laugh, playing awesome tunes from my iPod, cooking and generally being a nice guy. . . I was the Daddy of the group!

So, the group, 10 of us, an Israeli girl (Narma), her friend Zara from the UK, a couple from the UK (Will & Stacey – I Think), a lad called Giles (UK) who just ate and ate. He also ate peanut butter with everything (Savage). There were 2 friends that had met while traveling (Andrew and Jo - UK) and 2 coolio Canadian sisters (Erin & Sabrina). My little family. . . !

So, we had the food, and I went in the sea to get dishwater, we got all cleaned up then started to mingle with all the other groups and partied, well I did anyway. My little family where tired, some of which went to bed at 8.30. . . I didn’t go to bed til about 5am. . . . Well I didn’t really get to bed, I just crashed in some others tent!

I was first up in the morning (about 6 – 6.30, Yeah I know, no sleep, sleep when ya dead!). Anyway, wanting to get away on time and inline with the tides I decided to wake the people up with some beautiful music. . . The chosen tunes was ‘My Immortal by Evanescence’ which raised a few of the dead, followed by ‘Wake up’ by the Boo Radley’s, which pretty much got everyone else up. . . . The nice wake up call made a lot of people smile!

I had already had a bit of a chat with Will about driving, everyone else, after seeing what we had to drive through opted out. So Will wanted to try. . . And he did a splendid job on the 2nd day and because we got up early and away, we timed the tide really well, so he could drive on some of the harder sand which is so much easier, so he really got in to it and drove that day. . . . ! We headed up to most northern point of the Island that we were allowed to drive to ‘Indian Head’ and the weather was red hot, even that early in the morning.

We walked up the hill to the top of the Head and to the lookout and saw sharks, dolphins and manta rays in the waters below. . . We then did the 45 or so minute walk up the beach to the ‘Champagne Rock pools’ and chilled out here for a few hours. The pools were where the sea crashes over the rocks, so it was salt water! Still very nice though and good to chill in the sun!

We headed back to the truck and had some wraps for lunch, while we waited for the tide to drop before we headed off to the second nights camp. We decided that we would stay at Eli Creek, which was a fresh water creek, as it would really nice in the morning to have a dip. The groups however got split up as one group had burnt their clutch out and broke down. . . . To cut a long story short, me and Pete did taxi service to 5 of the group to take them back down the island to another camp, where their truck had been taken. . . .

So at our camp after some confusion from the others just ended up being mine and Pete’s group, but we still had a great night. We made a really nice chicken and veg stir fry with rice and cracked open the beers. . . . We messed around, went in the sea and played some drinking games. . . ! It wasn’t such a late night probably 2 – 3 ish. . . . I say probably because I don’t really know.

So, as planned in the morning the creek was a welcome blessing, the water was a little cold, but really refreshing and everyone loved it. . . We stayed there til the tide was right for us to leave. . . . I drove us out camp and then Zara had 5 minutes at driving. . . . Then it was back to me to get us back to the ferry. . . . I seemed to drive for miles, it took about an hour and a half to get back and we were ahead of schedule, so got the earlier ferry back, which enabled us to get back first, unpack everything and get the truck checked over. We then could get back to the hostel and in the pool!

We did, then Pete’s lot arrived an hour or so later and joined us. . . We then got on it and had another party. Another great night, however I got bitten like crazy from the mozzies!

PS. Sorry there are not many pic's from Fraser Island, there was sand everywhere and I didn't wanna trash my camera. I was also busy a lot of the time driving and stuff. . . . !