we arrived at Hervy Bay at about 5.30AM, to be picked up by our hostel, it was a short drive back to the hostel and we were really, really tired, and to top it off, we weren't going to get any sleep until that night. So at roughly 5.45AM we were told to sit around until the reception opened. But were had to sit outside because none of the doors opened till 7AM. And as I remember it was cold. Which is surprising to say its Australia. Anyway once it hit 7AM we had to sit around until 8AM but it was ok because we were in the warmth of the bar. don't worry we weren't drinking, just having some free breakfast and coffee!
After putting our stuff in the room I decided to update my journal and josh decided he'd go for a walk. I lied earlier, because I had a sneaky nap, but don't tell Josh! Anyway when he returned he said that their was a beach just down the road. The next thing I know I've got a Frisbee hitting me in the head, "Happy Birthday!" he said, so I had to tell him it wasn't for another couple of days! But anyway it gave us something to do on the beach! Later that day we treated ourselves to some fish and chips, pretty crap but nice at the time.
The next day we had to wake up early again to meet the Fraser Island group. Me and Josh were the first out, so we were sat on the bench freezing again, and then loads of people came out with bags, so we assumed they were leaving Hervy Bay, and before we knew it we were following them all into a room, its not until we sat down that we realised we were the only lads out of eight of us! So in total there were 5 English (ME, Josh, Cally, Kirsty and Rebecca) 2 Dutch (Kristina and Julie) and 2 German.(sorry I forgot your names! (they were boring anyway!))
The organiser jumped straight in and told us what we needed and to give her all the money, she gave us all jobs to do before we went. I volunteered for the alcohol. Josh and Kristina volunteered for the shopping, and Cally and Kirsty had to pick up the car, seeing as they were the designated drivers.
Everyone except Josh and Kristina drove to the rental place to pick up the car, after a frightening talk by the owner of the company, we were ready to meet our 4x4. Josh and Kristina returned with loads of shopping and change, I don't know how they managed it but they did. Anyway we started loading the 4x4, which involved climbing on the roof and strapping it all down to the roof box.
We finished the loading and set off for the ferry, it was a bumpy ride, and the inside was very minimum, so I broke the ice with "Hey, we should call it 'Tin-tin'" so that name stuck and people started coming out of their shell a bit more. We boarded the ferry and 20 minutes later we were on Fraser Island.
As soon as we got off the ferry we were told to put it into high 4x4 drive. So we did that and we found out why, as soon as you get off the ferry there is about 10 meters of tarmac then the rest of the way is sand. Offroading was great fun, I bet it was better to drive though, anyway we went to lake Mackenzie which is the most famous fresh water lake on Fraser island. It was a beautiful lake with pure white sand, and clear water (until you get to the drop off, then its just black and cold!) it was Lake Mackenzie where we saw our first dingo, dingoes are notorious on Fraser Island and they can be a bit too inquisitive, there have been reports of stolen handbags and backpacks because someone left an apple in it, or other nice smelling things! On the way back to the van, we couldn't work out where the keys were, I managed to break into the van with a dodgy window, but we couldn't go anywhere without keys, it wasn't the best start, we'd been on the island for about and hour and we had already lost the keys! A few of us went back to the beach to see if we could see them in the sand where we had put all our stuff, and the rest of them stayed at the van to see if it was under or in it. After about 15 minutes Rebecca (the one who lost them) found them again on a planter ledge. So we set off again and we played on it and made her feel really guilty about losing them.
That night we played card games including spoons, and we found out that Cally was one vicious player, she managed to scar josh's arm with a spoon! it's a scar he wont forget though, it was a brilliant night.
The next morning it was my 19th Birthday! And we had a lot planned. We set off for Lake Wabby, which was a lake that was set in some sand dunes, unfortunately we weren't allowed to drive on the sand dunes so we had to park up then walk about 1km to the lake. It was a nice walk, except I had to carry the cooler box (on my birthday!) I decided to go bare foot, which wasn't a good idea, I got bitten by an ant that was about 5cm long, blue and had fangs at least 0.5cm long. And it hurt! So I killed it and watched it die, it was satisfying!
Lake Wabby was a nice lake as well, it was a smaller lake but it meant the water was warm. The sand dunes were at a 45-50°Degree slope, so you could get a nice run up before you fell flat into the water. We spent about 2 hours at Wabby then we set off back to our other campsite.
On Fraser Island, everyone drives on the beaches, and treats them as a main road. And just like a road you have to stay on the right. don't get me wrong it wasn't like a motorway, you'd pass another car every 10 minutes or so. Anyway. Along the 75 mile beach you come across the Wreck of Maheno. Which was an old hospital ship during WWII, and after the war it was decommissioned and while being towed from Melbourne and got caught in a cyclone, which in turn beached it on Fraser Island. Later the RAF used it as target practice, now rusty as an old fish hook, three and a half storeys are buried under the sand.
We took some pictures of the landmark then went back to our new campsite. We set up camp (when I say we, basically me and Kirsty) while the rest unpacked. Some of the girls started cooking and me and Kristina were sat on to of Tin-tin drinking some milk, while Kristina taught me some Danish, and some Dutch lads turned up, and Kristina started to talk to them, then he looked at me and asked me something in Dutch, Kristina whispered to me that he wanted to know if I was Danish so I said back "Yo, du air smok!" which means "Yes, you are hot!" but that was my only Danish sentence I knew at the time. So the guy turned around promptly and left me and Kristina to finish our milk.
That night we had a party for my birthday, and it was seriously one of the best parties I've ever had. We drank more than half the alcohol we had for the three days trip. A park ranger came out of nowhere and asked us why we were all celebrating, so we told him it was my birthday, I thought he was going to tell us to quieten down and go to bed, but 10 minutes later he turns up with two mugs and hands me one. He tells me "Happy Birthday" and raises his mug, so do I and we drink, I later found out he gave me a mug of whiskey. That went down smoothly and we all start chatting. I vaguely remember swinging from the beams on the roof and the ranger was trying to chat up Becca, so the park ranger was now affectingly called "Paedo".
The next morning we woke up and found that our precious Tin-tin had a crack in the windshield, we'd have to get it fixed when we got back to Hervy Bay. We packed up the tents and set off to Sharks Point, which is the far North peninsular of the island. Supposedly if you go at the right time you can see sharks, whales, dolphins etc. once we arrived it was a hard job driving in the soft sand and Tin-tin just kept sinking, so we all got out and let Kirsty drive it as far as she could.
It was a nice walk up to the peninsular, but unfortunately we didn't see any life forms swimming in the deep blue waters below. So after 20 minutes we set back off, but we couldn't find Cally anywhere. We were starting to get worried, she could of blown off the side of the cliff for all we know, it was really windy. So we all split into twos and separated to see if we could find her. After about 30 minutes me and Kirsty found her sat at the bottom of the path innocently waiting for us, Kirsty nearly burst into tears she was so worried about her.
With all nine present we set off back to the ferry with a few stops along the way. We were flying down the 75 mile stretch of beach when every now and again you come across a little stream that cuts a channel out of the sand, and these are hard to see, so you can expect a lot of hard breaking. Anyway we must have been doing roughly 50MPH when all of a sudden a channel appears which we basically fly over and crash on the other side, and the next thing we know, we see our tent fly off the roof in front of us. We check to see if everyone's ok. Then get out to inspect the damage. The tent that flew off ended up about 10 meters away from the car, and the ledge we jumped off was about 30-40CM high. And we basically stopped dead on the other side of the channel, with a big Tin-tin shaped dent in the sand. Nothing was seriously damaged apart from the tent ripped a bigger hole in the canvas that holds all the equipment in.
A few minutes later we arrived at Eli Creek which is one of the most famous creeks, it moves 80 million litres of water a day. There's a path that goes up the side of the creek and a platform where you can get in and float back down towards the 4x4. It was quite shallow so we all decided to walk down it instead, which was nice and refreshing.
Another stop later we arrived at a lake which was ruled by tortoises, so we watched them for a while, after a while I got board and made up stories about them all, and fortunately they were all called Gary. We sat and watched them for a long time, we couldn't go until all Gary's had their heads under the water at the same time. Which took a while as there must have been 30 tortoises.
Later we went to another lake where Julie taught Me, Josh, Cally and Kirsty some karate Katas. It was funny to learn, especially with Josh; the most uncoordinated person I know. We finished off all the food we could and headed back to the ferry, it was a nice drive, shame it would be our last really. We arrived at the ferry with 20 minutes to go, and for some reason we all sat in Tin-tin where it was like an oven.
After we got off on the other side Cally had to reverse it out and up onto the tarmac. This was fine but when we all got in, we couldn't change it out of high four, and back into two wheel drive. We all had a go, and we tried looking in the manual, tried brute force, double clutch. Etc. eventually Cally managed to find a mechanic that was hanging around and he jumped in, flipped a few switches and moved the gear stick into two wheel drive.
So we were of again this to depart with Tin-tin. The man that checked the vehicle saw the crack in the windshield and he told us we'll have to pay for the damages. So we were thinking "s***, its going to cost an arm and a leg!" so we asked him how much it would cost, and all together it cost $80. Which is nothing between 9 of us. Plus the change that we had from the shopping.
We got back to the hostel and checked back in, she put us into two rooms. Later that night we all fancied some grease so we went off to find a chippy. Minus the two Germans, we had our chips and went back to the hostel where we sat outside and said bye to Kristina and Julie that were going at 11PM to Maroochydore. Then we all went to bed, Cally and Kirsty were staying another night, so Me, Josh and Becca were off to Noosa Heads in the morning.