20/08/12

Rainbow beach, you sly dog. During the day we went for a walk around the area and there's really not a lot to do around here. One row of shops, it's like a small village. However, at 4pm there was a free guided walk. Not wanting to pass off on anything for free, we decided to go. Oh my. Jerrod took us on a half hour walk to the 'sand blow' a massive sand dune. The walk was definitely worth it. I wasn't prepared for a spectacular view yesterday. Which we did a bit of sand boarding on. There was a competition for whoever got furthest gets a free beer. FREE BEER?! I had 2 goes and failed misserably, Luke won. However; the next competition was mine. Throw a boomerang and catch it? I've never thrown a boomerang before, but let's just say that free beer tasted good. That makes it sound like I did it on my first attempt. That was not the case, one of my attenpts came back at speed and pretty much went up, round and came down vertically, spinning. It landed stuck in the sand board. As soon as we got back, we cashed in our meal vouchers and got on it. Quiz. Beer pong. $5 pints. This place is to my liking. We didn't win the quiz, so y'know, standard. But we met a chemistry physist who's on our fraser island trip on tuesday and I anihilated the opposision at beer pong. All in all, it was a good night. Oh, and James just reminded me to write about Kirsten. Yesterday I met Kirsten, James's girlfriend. She vommed, everywhere.

23/08/12

Just back from Fraser Island, what a trip. I did the same as the Whitsundays, by taking a notepad and pen and writing notes to type up when I get back, a good idea, yeh? Well the morning after the first night I went to write notes to find I had already written some incoherent nonsense when I was drunk. 'Failing', 'Stars', 'No dingo!', 'Crap driving', 'f***ing woman drivers!' and 'Makenzie & the secret beach' - I have no idea what 'Failing' meant, but the rest I can shed some light on...

So here goes; Day 1:

We got up and gathered at reception, sorted out the food, met our group who we'd be sharing the food & car with, and set off. On to the barge, across the water and on to a dusty trail which kicked up tons of... well, dust. After about 40 minutes of dust/beach driving, we arrived where we'd camp right next to the beach. We set up, had lunch and jumped in the cars again, I decided to drive as I'd heard the drive to Lake Makenzie was the best one. It was certainly the most difficult. The soft sand lent no traction and I got stuck a few times. However, we eventually got there and what a beautiful place, the lake was pretty big too. Considering Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world; this lake's only input is from the rain and only output is evaporation. It's the largest freshwater lake on the island and swimming in freshwater was so nice considering the amount of saltwater we've swam in over the last 7 weeks. We'd been told to walk around the lake a bit, over a bridge and we'd find a secluded beach where nobody else would be. We did this, and found the bridge which was about a foot under water. Crossed it anyway and the other beach was pretty much the same, just without people. After lake Makenzie, we headed back for a steak dinner. It sounds nice, but let's be honest, considering this is the largest sand island in the world, I can assure you that the main ingredient was in fact: sand. The first night was a heavy one, but enjoyable. Luke (our tour guide) who also does free lance photography helped me get a better picture of the milky way, so that one will be uploaded instead of the one I took last week. Oh and look at it in the dark for a more impressive photo. Honestly though, it's nothing compared to the ones he's taken. Oh yeh, we saw no dingos and came to the conclusion that they are myth and Sam was a better driver than the guys, hence the woman driver comment.

Day 2:

Quite a rude awakening considering how bad we all felt. Nonetheless, we had breakfast, I made lunch as we'd be eating on the move and we hopped back in the cars up to Eli Creek which Luke has dubbed 'Hangover Creek'. We walked up a few hundred metres and jumped in, cold? Yes. But it was cool, we could just chill and float down. It was relaxing and refreshing all at once and cured quite a few people. Then it was up to the 'Champagne Pools' near the top of the island, they get their name from the waves crashing over the top of the rocks, creating a fizz effect in the pools. After a couple of hours there, we headed up to 'Indian Head' which is at the tip of the island. Known for its stunning view of marine life, this is when my camera decided it would be a good time to die on me. So no photos of the whales, manta rays or sharks we saw. You'll have to trust me on that one. Highlight of the day though was going to the shop. We initially went there for ice cream, which was well needed, but when they announced they'd reduced their pies to get rid of them, well. Well that's just fine! Also, Luke (not the tour guide) bought a giant inflatable octopus which only had 6 legs and looked more like a jellyfish. It adopted the name 'Jellypus'. We tied it to the roof of the car and set off to Eli creek again. 6 people floating down a creek on an inflatable Jellypus has got to be a sight. On the way back to camp, we saw a few dingoes. We got out and had a tongue race, these molluscs which open and use their tongue like muscle to bury itself into the ground. Weird creatures. Oh we also stopped off at the shipwreck. The biggest luxury cruise liner of it's time, only to be over taken by the titanic. After a stirfry; we had a few drinks and hit the hay. I say hay, the sand was more like concrete and has left us with bruises on our hips when we were lying on our sides.

Day 3:

This was the day we left 'paradise' named so by the aboriginals due to its spring fresh water and source of fish as the 2nd most westerly point in Australia. I bet they liked the taste of sand too... Packed up and went to Lake Wobbie with the Jellypus of course. A casual 2.7km walk on sand through forest we arrived at a massive sand blow and the 11m deep lake. We spent a good hour or two dicking about in the water, rolling down the dune into the water and generally lying on the sand burning. It was a good morning. We left there at 12ish, got back in the car and next thing I knew we were at the barge. I either passed out from sun stroke or it's been such a good couple of days that I was knackered and able to sleep through the bumpy ride.

So that was Fraser Island, I can't say how much I was looking forward to the shower, but the hostel had a pipe burst so when we arrived we had to wait for an undefined amount of time before it was fixed. Luckily, this was only 30minutes. Tonight we have the Fraser Island reunion, where everybody is going out having had showers and wearing clean clothes to spend a classy night in the only club on Rainbow Beach. This should be nice.

...much later...

The club is only open on Monday nights. Monday?! Who goes out on a Monday?! So we just stayed at the hostel bar, which was decent enough with the free pool and darts. Besides, for some reason I couldn't drink much beer. Had a chat with Juanita about juaht I'm doing after the east coast and it looks like I've got a driving buddy from Sydney to Melbourne! My plan was to do the return hire car thing along the great ocean road, so instead of $1 per day, may aswell make it 50c per day and have some company!

24/08/12

I was planning to do nothing today. Instead, I did some sea fishing and had an awesome night in the bar. This all came to $7, and I'm relatively drunk. $5 for the fishing equipment between 5 of us and $2 for a bar of Dairy Milk. "How the hell are you 'relatively drunk' I hear you cry?! Well that all comes down to winning the quiz (2 jugs), winning the half time game (2 jugs) and winning beer pong (2 jugs). These were shared out, obviously, but still. In case you're wondering, we didn't catch any fish. As for dinner, we all went to the shop together earlier and went splits on veg and chocolate cake, so I ate like a king tonight. Anyway, that's enough disjointed rambling. Plans! We used the free internet next door at peterpans to make our plans. Most of the hostels in Noosa seem to be fully booked, so we booked in Nomads which are meant to be pretty good anyway. It's a shame as it meant missing out on 2 awesome looking hostels. One which offers free surfboards, kyaks and a few other cool things, and another which is an aboriginal camping themed hostel about 2km out of town. The latter of the two has free kyaking to a remote fire area when you spit roast a pig. Can't believe I'm missing that. But the reason for the full bookings is because there are numerous events happening in the area this weeking; A motor cross show, A flower festival and a Food, Beer & Wine festival. So Noosa pretty much caters for everyone this weekend!

I think I'll leave it there now as I'm getting the bus tomorrow at 9:40. The same bus as Juanita, Scottish Steve, Dan & Bryony and a few others. The 3 hours down should fly by!