Better start this little soap opera now. This could take a while. The Oz bus arrived in Hervey Bay just before 6pm on the Friday. We disembarked at Palace Backpackers, with arrangements to meet up for a pizza later - all except the cheese-phobe, who ended up walking down the street for a chicken burger (God, I really miss the food in Asia - Australian food is the same tasteless stodge you get back home, only with less flavour). As I exited the bus, I was greeted by Lucy and Caroline, two 18-year-old English girls I had already randomly shared a dorm with in Mission Beach and Magnetic Island. I booked my room, and (since Hervey Bay has even less to entertain visitors than Airlie Beach) at the same time booked myself onto a 3-day, 2-night 4x4 self-drive on Fraser Island for the next day. At 6:45am on Saturday, the intrepid travellers gathered in the TV lounge to be inducted. This consisted of a grizzled, skinny bloke called Wayne grumpily sticking on a video and instructing us to put another video in when that one finished. We sat through a series of examples of do's and don'ts, primarily involving common sense and dingo-safe measures - don't leave food out for dingos, don't light fires, don't leave litter etc. Then the 15 people gathered were told of their groups. My group of seven people included: Jenny, 22, English, travelling down to Brisbane to meet her boyfriend. I already knew her from the Oz Experience bus and the stay in Kroombit; Lucy, 18, English, boarding school girl, mental age of 12, giggly, irritating, posh, extreme slapper; Caroline, 18, English, boarding school girl (and Lucy's friend), more sensible and reserved than Lucy but even more posh, when she smiles she looks like a horse; Thomas, 26, Italian, cook/actor who lives in London, dresses like an 80's throwback (ripped denim is BACK!) with hair like Jon Bon Jovi circa 1992, acting career amounts to an appearance as an Albanian waiter in Rio Ferdinand's one-off wind-up TV show; Nicholas, 22, Italian, Thomas's brother, "musician" who lives in Byron Bay in Australia because "everyone in Europe is corrupt" (pot, kettle etc.); Michael, 22, Italian, friend of the other Italians, doesn't speak much English, very weird, anger management issues, listens to loud rock music with lots of swearing in it (a bit like me, then). After signing our lives away and driving the previous groups' 4x4s back to the depot, we went shopping for our supplies for the weekend. Jenny instantly established herself as the organised member of the group, the Italians made suggestions for food (and resisted picking the cheap supermarket brand options for anything), Caroline kept quiet, and Lucy started insisting on pushing the trolley and shouting "I'M HUNGRY!!!" at everyone. My contribution was to suggest we get peanuts and chocolate, both of which turned out to be good calls. The ferry to Fraser Island was at lunchtime, and we had a chance to ponder the stupidity of the groups we had been put into. The three Italians, Jenny and I could all drive out of our group of 7 (Lucy and Caroline being under 21 meant they were excluded). Of the other group of 8, two Danish girls could drive but had elected not to (Marie said that she "gets aggressive" when she drives - more of this later...) so they only had one driver, an ultra-laid-back Japanese guy with a ponytail, goatee beard and permanent grin, who rejoiced in the fantastically appropriate name Suzuki. We opted to stick together to keep a larger group, and in case of any problems like getting stuck in the sand or having a flat tyre/battery. First stop was Lake Mackenzie, which was a jaw-dropping spectacle. The sand is very pale (although not as fine or white as Whitehaven Beach) and the water is pale blue near the shore, changing to a deep, dark, pure blue colour as the sand drops away underneath. Most people got in the water (and complained that it was cold) but Caroline, Marie and I swam out some distance to revel in the purity of the clean fresh water. After that it was my turn to drive, so we took the cars towards the beach. There are sand tracks up and across Fraser Island, but the only way to travel at speed is to get to the Seventy-Five Mile Beach where you can drive along the hard sand at up to 65kph. That's the speed limit, anyway, the rules of the road apply on the beach just like any other Australian road (on the inland tracks it's 35kph but the chances of actually reaching that speed are remote). There are strict time limits on when you can drive on the beach, though - three hours either side of low tide. After that the beach becomes impassable without driving in the sea, which is an absolute no-no. We'd lose our deposit, for a start, because they have ways of finding out (apparently). Driving a 4x4 on soft sand with tree roots and sudden dips throwing the vehicle around is, it has to be said, bloody good fun. Once I'd got used to it I was able to change up from 2nd gear to 3rd gear at various points, and managed to not get stuck. Upon reaching the beach and driving down it for a while, I surrendered the wheel to Jenny to have a shot. We found a site to camp along the beach, behind the dunes. When we had packed the vehicles we were given the option of taking two or three tents. Each tent sleeps up to four people, and the other (8-person) car opted for two. I suggested taking three, since there was room for it, and it would give us flexibility. Upon setting up the tents, our car ended up having the three girls in one tent, the three Italians in another tent, and me in the third. Before dinner, we had a look at the beach (which, as the name suggests, stretches off in both directions as far as the eye can see, and is an extraordinary sight) and I found a washed-up coconut covered in limpet-type things, which opened up and waved in the air like Venus flytraps. Dinner (or "suppah" as Lucy and Caroline kept calling it) was prepared on both nights by Thomas, being the cook. On the first night we cooked all our meet on the barbecue, and ate chicken, sausages and spare ribs with salad and grilled peppers embedded with tinfoil. Very tasty, and the "eskie" containing the drinks started to get emptied. (An "eskie" is the Australian word for a coolbox, presumably derived from "Eskimo". I've probably spelled it wrong, but it's yet another made-up Aussie word, so who cares?) This is when the soap opera moves up a gear... Lucy, true to form, decided to move in on Thomas, the 80's throwback cook/actor (who Jenny had actually seen on TV in the Rio Ferdinand show). Her girlish charms obviously did the trick, and they disappeared off into the dunes after a while. Nicholas and Michael, meanwhile, had moved in on two Swiss girls in the other 4x4. The six of them were sitting near the 4x4, Suzuki and his girlfriend and the German couple from the other car had disappeared for moonlit walks, so the remaining four (me, Jenny, and the Danish girls Marie and Lorne) decided to meet the neighbours. I had spoken to an Australian fisherman who was camped nearby earlier in the day, and it was their camp we walked into. We were led in by the dazzling array of lights, lit by their portable generator. They were four middle-aged blokes out fishing for a week, and had an enviable camp set up. A string of lightbulbs illuminated their table and the surrounding spacious tents. They welcomed us into their humble abode, shared some home-made Baileys (surprisingly nice) and told us some stories of what they'd seen in their time... One story was when one of them saw two young men and an older man wearing waders fall into the sea from a dinghy. The young men made it back into the boat, but the older man wasn't strong enough and his waders filled with water, so he was lost to sea. The next day, these same fishermen found his remains. He had been bitten in half by a shark, so only the be-wadered portion remained. Down to his calfs he had been nibbled by marine life, but below that a watertight seal had been formed and his feet were untouched. They called the police, who flew out in a small plane. Unfortunately for them they had no storage facility for human remains, so one of the unfortunate officers had to fly back with them sitting on his lap. Obviously fisherman are known for their tall tales, but more often than not the truth is stranger than fiction, and I certainly didn't doubt their word. They thanked us for coming to visit them, and we returned to our own camp. Lucy and Thomas had disappeared, but the other Italians and the Swiss girls were still giggling near the 4x4. Shortly after this, it started to move. We assumed they were moving the car to get more light onto the camp. Right up to the point when they drove off and stopped on the beach. I ran up the dune with my torch to check on what the hell they were doing, and they then drove off down the beach. At high tide. In the dark. After having consumed at least half a bottle of vodka and several beers each. There was nothing to do except go to sleep and hope they came back - although I made no secret of wishing they crashed. The next morning I woke to see our 4x4 parked in its original place. We packed up and left, and I ventured the opinion that what they had done (although Michael was the only one who was driving) was extremely stupid and irresponsible (some other words might have been included) and risked harm and death to themselves and their passengers, not to mention the probable loss of our $500 bond and the possibility of a $3000 fine for leaving one of the eskies out overnight (we'd put it away in the car, they'd removed it before their little drive). In typical Italian fashion, they didn't seem that bothered about it. It did, however, become apparent later in the day that it had dawned on them how stupid and dangerous it was. On Sunday we could only drive on the beach up until 8am, so we headed to one of the inland tracks to explore the island and find somewhere to eat breakfast and lunch. We stopped at the Boomerang Lakes, which turned out to be non-tourist-friendly (no beach, full of reeds). When we were able to return to the beach, we headed south to see the Maheno, a decayed shipwreck on the beach, then headed up to the north to the Champaigne Pools - pools of sea water which are replenished by the waves crashing and trickling over the rocks. Nice for a swim, but very small. We camped a little to the south, with the intention of watching the sun rise over Indian Head (one of the few rocky bits on an island made almost entirely of sand). On the way, we finally saw a dingo standing on the dunes - this was our only sighting, the precautions of going to the toilet in pairs etc. proved unnecessary. Thomas made some pasta in a special sauce for us, and it became apparent that Michael and Nicholas were not going to drink that evening (proving that the idiocy of their behaviour the previous night had sunk in a little). The entertainment for the evening was our battery being flattened by the lights, necessitating Suzuki (which may or may not have been his actual name, nobody seems to know) to drive to a nearby camp and get some helpful locals to return with jump leads. Jump leads being just one of the things which you would have thought would be essential for a pair of 4x4s driving in the wilderness, but which were not supplied to us. Once our car was started again, we agreed that since Michael had drunk less than anyone else, he should take it for a drive to make sure the battery was recharged. Nicholas and one of the Swiss girls went too. By the time they returned most other people had gone to bed, and things were fairly civil. Then Nicholas started making some comments which I took issue with, which I won't detail here. I told him he was out of order, and we had a little discussion - it didn't get particularly heated, since we agreed on a good many points raised. I suppose it cleared the air a little, and the atmosphere was definitely clearer afterwards. The atmosphere that night, unfortunately, was cold - a fact made worse by my not having a sleeping bag. I'll rephrase that - I did have a sleeping bag, but when I went to bet (after everyone else, having had a walk on the beach) I found it was missing. It turned out the next morning that Lucy had slept in the Italians' tent, in my sleeping bag, while hers was rolled up in her tent. I wasn't very happy about this either, but there was no point in making an issue of it the next day - all four of them were so self-obsessed that they simply couldn't see that it was a problem. We got up before 5am to pack up the camp and drive to Indian Head, and climbed it to sit on the rocky outcrop and see the sunrise. After the letdown of sunrise over Ankhor Wat, it was a stunning spectacle - the shades of purple, red and yellow outlining the horizon suddenly being pierced by the sun glaring straight out over the water. Next up was a drive to Eli Creek, which as a creek was unremarkable but for the simple fact that there's no soil, only sand. The sheer strangeness of this is hard to explain. It's held together by plant roots, by the way. After this we headed for Lake Wabby, where an encroaching sand bank is gradually eliminating the lake. This means that there is a huge, steep sand dune serving as a beach. This in turn means that you can roll down it into the water. Probably the single most fun thing to do on the island. Time was running out for us to reach the ferry port, so we headed back over the tracks (Jenny driving, and getting the awkward bits again - on Sunday it was two tour buses coming the other way, this time it was a patch of soft sand that was almost impossible to drive over). Back to the ferry in good time, and then a return to the depot - the salt-water excursions evidently didn't show up, we got our deposit back. We were all put into the same apartment in Palace Backpackers that night, and the post-Fraser party fizzled out for most people quite early - three days with no showers and little sleep will do that to people. In the end, everything was fine - Thomas and Nicholas were both really nice guys, and Michael seems to be as well (despite his "issues"). Jenny kept us organised, Lucy behaved like the spoiled whiny brat that she is, Caroline despaired slightly at her friend's behaviour, and I got stuck in the middle of it all. As usual. Another day of rest and laundry, and a chance to explore Hervey Bay (fine if you want to buy real estate and/or retire there, not much to do otherwise) before the Oz bus to Brisbane on Thursday at 8am...