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FRASER ISLAND - 8th June
Woken up at 9:30am the next day by a very friendly and chatty cleaning lady we are informed that it is the Queens' Birthday - a public holiday in Australia (seemingly) - but which means that everywhere in town will be either closed or extrememly busy (being one of the few establishments not closed) and that such non-closed establishments will most certainly be enforcing some ludicrous public holiday surcharge of 15% - so my $5 beer shall infact now cost me $5.75!!! Outrageous! She was surprised to discover that we did not celebrate the Queen's Birthday in the UK (further research will show that Canada and New Zealand do not either) and was even more shocked to discover that it was not her actual birthday, the Queen's Birthday holiday in Australia being her Official birthday (ie that of all monarchs of the commonwealth) and not her unofficial birthday (ie the actual day of the year she was born). The conclusion - Australians will use any excuse for a day off work and a beer. So begining to think that perhaps the French were right in chopping their royal's heads off we went in search of somewhere to have some lunch. Taking the cleaning lady's advice we went down along the beach road and found a hotel/bar/restaurant and ordered myself a rather tasty and rather fancy looking bruschetta given the establishment at some extortionate price of $16. And whilst continuing to complain (loudly) about the Queen's surcharge we discovered the most ridiculous list of fines applicable in the case of just about any illegal situation that could occur inside the bar - the fines to the bar staff, to the individual and the bar for serving intoxicated persons, for serving minors, for allowing smoking... - massive amounts of money for each largely displayed on the bar's window right next to the menu and opening times. They did indeed take up the entire window I would doubt there was any natural sunlight getting in at all as a result of all these fine posters. Anyways, food eaten and a number of fines avoided we meandered to the beach across the road and did some sunbathing whilst reading and listening to iPods.
We left and walked back to the hostel at sunset and put some laundry in that we needed for the next few days and so that our bags wouldn't stink up the joint whilst on Fraser Island. We took the hostel shuttle to the bottle shop (the first drive-thru bottle shop I had ever seen and found hilarious at the time) and bought ourselves 3 boxes of goon, thats 9.9 litres (3.3 litres x 3), for our 3 days on Fraser Island between the 2 of us. Back at the hostel we put our names down for the Dominos Pizza buffet dinner, but as it would turn out we were the only people to do so, but the nice hostel guy went and got us one each. I then go and play some drinking games with our dorm-mate Joe (from Canada) and a large group of predominantly Germans. Not intending to stay too long I manage to spend quite a long time playing ring of fire and stealing other people's alcohol (who can say no to free alcohol?). I get back to the room with Joe about 1am and so quickly pack up what I need for Fraser into my little bag and getting what little rest I can before having to get up at 6am.
And 6am came in the blink of an eye, literally, it felt like actual seconds before my iPod persisted in bleeping at me and telling me to get the f*** up. We checked out and dumped our big backpacks in the lockers before congregating in the common room with everyone else to watch the safety videos and be put into our groups. The videos were possibly the most simple things ever, but there was an actual laugh out moment on what to do should you encounter a dingo, the suggested reaction is to stop do nothing and back away (sound advice) but the actors were hilarious, wide eyed, actually looking terrified, whilst also acting quite dead. Other advice included - don't drive in the sea, don't break the speed limit, generally don't be a retard and things like don't litter. The leader guy did then point out though that a bus had crashed a couple of weeks ago and injured a lot of people, killing 1 and hospitalising another (who is now paralysed) so the moral of the story is pay attention to the video and actually don't act like a retard or people die. Then we were put into our groups! And we got - Nic and Ben (a cute couple from Sheffield taking a year out before going to uni), Sophie and Matt (a working couple from London on a holiday), Melanie and Delphine (2 French girls who would prove to be the source of much hilarity and conversation on Fraser Island) and Jens (a rather buff German boy). We signed our contract that said we wouldn't sue the company if we crashed the bus and hospitalised everyone before driving the bus to the warehouse, receiving all of our equipment and being shown how to pack it into the van in such a way as to actually fit. Then driving round to wooolworths to pick up the food for the trip. God it was such a hassle deciding on what to buy, even given a list of suggested foods. We couldn't decide on what to BBQ, whether we were buying too much, what to buy for breakfasts (I didn't care since I don't particularly eat anything for breakfast), before even getting onto the matter of what pasta to buy to have with our mince (Team France was insistent on macaroni despite the rest of us planning on something rather larger and more appropriate for mince, so insistent they would buy it themselves anyway). Team France and Jens (aka Team Germany) would also rather insist on the purchase of some fizzy drinks, which would somehow see themselves into the common group purchase despite being quite obviously protected by their respective selectors. Common food all bought up we would then go about buying some snacks - some chips, some cookies, some milky ways *cough* - and beach essentials - bucket and spade, dinosaur shapes - and then legging it to the bus and blatantly breaking the speed limit to catch the ferry ride across to the island leaving in about 10 minutes. We get there just in time, just as the first cars are begining to board, and all got out and watched Matt rather skillfully reverse on to it.
The ferry ride was pretty eventful in itself depsite only being half an hour or so long, Matt and Jens let out the air on the tires in preparation for the island terrain as shown at the warehouse, whilst the rest of us got to know each other a bit better, and THEN there were dolphins swimming alongside the ferry with us! 3 hour dolphin watching cruise in New Zealand - zero dolphins spotted; 10 minutes into random Australian ferry ride - at least 3 separate dolphin sightings that had all the backpackers on board running from one side of the ferry to the other in, what I imagine for the captain was, a rather comedic fashion. We disembarqued just before 12pm and filled up our massive water bottle as instructed before heading out into the thick of it to Central Station.
We quickly managed to lose both of the other 2 buses - one far off ahead of us, the other not seen for quite some time behind us - and the road was up and down, and real rough. The French girls were not a fan. We arrived at Central Station some 45 minutes later, the first bus having arrived just 5 minutes before us, the third bus still not sighted in a while. We went and took a look at the creek boardwalk, mostly consisting of some seriously large trees and a rather unsubstantial creek/stream before finding a picnic spot and making ourselves our lunch of sandwiches. Half way through which a bird out of NOWHERE swoops down and steals Ben's sandwich out of his hand after having just taken a bite out of it and whilst we are in shock at the bird's audacity and Ben is shouting at the damned bird, it then sits on a tree branch and s***s on his girlfriend Nic. This is too much for us and we descend into hysterics, even Nic laughed about it - evil bird, Jurassic Park has nothing on this island! So ever more mindful of those things around us we finish the rest of our lunch theft free and pack up and dispose of the rubbish in an environmentally friendly manner as instructed by the DVD (burn it..... just kidding) and pack ourselves back into the van for the next leg, which Lucy is driving and I am navigating. I begin by sending us in the wrong direction, for which I entirely blame the map (as it turns out we would have been going the right direction if we had perviously taken the road Lucy and I had assumed we had taken to get to Central Station, but we didn't we just followed the signs and so it would transpire that we had actually taken a rougher small road to Central Station than we were probably supposed to as indicated by the map). Anyways being in the middle of no where it is not immediately obvious when one is driving in the wrong direction and so we went driving 20 minutes in the wrong direction before coming to the sea and getting out and asking someone where the hell we were. So 20 minutes back the way we had came brought us back to Central Station where we had started and finally off the right way. Some 15 minutes later we stop the bus and consult on what direction we should go, not wanting to be responsible for taking us the wrong way when confronted with an intersection blantantly not on the map anywhere, looking for the large laminated map we had been given at the warehouse and discovering it to be the same s*** map. We make an executive decision, which proves to be the correct one, but which is also the rockiest, bumpiest road ever traversed by man in any kind of vehicle. At one point half the bus getting out for fear of toppling over, Lucy swapping drivers with Matt and Jens whooping with delight as it rocked side to side and came very close to toppling over, but sucessfully staying upright. The French girls swore a LOT (from outside the van).
We finally reach Lake Wabby Lookout and it is very pretty, but the 35 minute detour means we don't really have time to go down and explore (and indeed we think would not be long enough to explore had we not taken the detour) and opt to visit it tomorrow morning instead as an addition to our itinerary. We arrive at camp at 4:30pm and the first bus is already there (having not got lost or going down to the lake). The third is also there, how they are not entirely sure and they literally saw nothing the whole day they got so lost (not just me and my map reading skills). We set up camp a little bit further down the beach from them at the nearest possible opportunity and set up camp, me and Nic putting up the first tent beautifully I must say. Whilst Jens got going on the BBQ.
We started with a battered sausage-ball-thing sandwich, which was very tasty before progressing onto a steak sandwich, with lots of ketchup, that was utterly delicious with a side of goon (of course!). The Ozzies might be famous for their BBQing but the Germans sure aren't bad at it. Unfortuantely when we were all cleaning up and getting our stuff ready to join the other 2 buses for the evening's festivities, the smell from the BBQ had rather attracted the attention of a lone dingo, this was fine because we'd finished all the food and the best the dog was gonna get was a burnt nose from the grill ... UNTIL I realised I'd left my goon undefended and unattended by the tree with the BBQ where we'd been eating. WELL, as I'm sure you can imagine this changed things entirely and when he left the BBQ to do a bit of a snoop around the rest of the tents in search of anything that may have gotten away from the BBQ I swooped in and saved the precious alcohol. HERO. And I should at this point perhaps explain "goon" to those not in the know. Goon is cask wine or a wine box. Terriably cheap in Australia by anybody's standards, particularly when compared to the exorbitant costs of all other alcohols, it costs about $10 for 3 litres. Generally speaking it is supposed to taste foul. I found a delightful sweet white goon that not only was tasty as well as being cheap, but gave me NO HANGOVER. And this is unusual in that goon is also known for the terriable hangovers that it inflicts. But I had found the holy grail of alcohol here - cheap, plentiful, tasty and hangoverless! I was tempted to bloody export the stuff back home! Anyways booze rescued we then plodded off to join the others and found them all sitting in a massive group on their tarps - cunning - we had put them under our tents. And so we sat with them all and began the long and steady process of getting drunk, whilst playing a number of drinking games. One of Nic and Ben's creation being particularly infuriating and involving having to repeat everything the first person had said and done exactly - harder than it sounds - and so frustrating when some people get it right, but not knowing why, and when you get it wrong despite the fact you are positive you are saying and doing it exactly as they had done. A good game though, and a new one! And it got us good and drunk!
Suitably drunk we then headed down to the actual beach and Lucy magnificently ripped her Jesus pants after being dared by WHO to do a cartwheel and so headed back to the tents with the remainder of our van (unbeknownst to me at the time - with the goon). Still happily merry and in no way ready for bed I then went with Joe to the adjacent group of Koala Adventure campers, where they had built a quite illegal fire and stole some of their drinks whilst enjoying some good random conversation. No tallent unfortunately. I then stumble back to the tent, walking past it the first time, ditch my flip flops and half my belongings outside the tent despite being blatantly told not to that morning less we want the dingos to steal it and then utterly fail to shut the tent after climbing into it. First I can't find the zip, but I am immediately able to locate my ipod from my bag and then use it to attempt to find the zip. Still can't... then I find it and can't close it, after what seemed like an actual eternity of zip-related drama I get it closed and then swiftly pass out, whilst the others are shiverring of cold - should have drank more. Matt was actually, unfortunately, pretty ill during the night and kept getting out of the tent to have to run into the middle of no where and be sick, not for alcohol related illness and presumably not for food poisioning considering the rest of us were all OK, but being utterly comatose I totally failed to notice any of this going on until I woke up the next morning to be told by Sophie. Poor Matt.
After a breakfast of some bread and cornflakes to soak up the residual alcohol thats floating about in my blood stream I have to face the realities of being on a 'desert' island - I have not been to the toilet yet - and you know what alcohol does to you. So I treked off into the middle of nowhere with our shovel trying to find an isolated sheltered spot to start digging and choosing to completely ignore the safety video's advice of going in pairs. What would be to follow would be for no one's eyes or ears. Whilst only somewhat hungover I was at least completely within my senses. Another boy from the Koala group would come wandering past our camp thinking he had gained shelter from his own and start dropping his pants to then look straight ahead and see he had wandered into clear view of our own. We laughed at him.
Whilst our itinerary for the day didn't have us leaving until low tide around 11am we packed up camp and having consulted the map found the route to Lake Wabby from the beach since we hadn't had the time (somehow?) to visit it the day before and dropped our trash off at the highly fortified dump site clearly designed to keep a million dingos out of it. From the "car park" its about a 2km walk through sand dunes that stretch so far and so high that it actually seemed like we had wakled into the middle of the Sahara and similarly once we reached Lake Wabby it was like a mirage - the water so large and clear, lush trees. The incline into the lake was also ridiculous. A steep sand dune followed onto the lake and the lake itself followed the same gradient getting to a ridiculously deep depth very quickly. The boys and Lucy take to running/stumbling down the hill and jumping in. The French girls take to stepping into the water and taking photos of themselves and then getting out. I sunbathe. We try giving the frisbee we had bought a shot, but its s*** and completely fails to be of any use whatsoever so I amuse myself playing with the dinosaur shapes and making sand-stegasaurauses. Lucy play fights/ playground-flirts with Jens. After a couple of hours we head back to Bruce (the name we have given our van) and leave for the Chamapagne Pools just after 11:50am almost perfectly on-time.
Lucy was driving, Jens navigating (since he would a) not be getting the chance to drive or navigate otherwise and b) given my own skills the previous day). The rocks we were to pass over were ridiculous - ridiculously large, ridiculously bumpy - Bruce was roughing it and Team France were going nuts - you have never heard so much swearing in French in your life. They would later say of Lucy "She's a good driver... but she's bloody crazy" this is true of course, but not with reference to her driving, if we went any slower we'd not get over the rocks and most likely end up getting stuck, it was the rocks that was making the journey rough not Lucy. We were then to take a road off of the rocks - cut to Team France visibly calming down until the road then turns and starts going downhill again and we are confronted with an actual bus - like a bus bus - that is to say a vehicle sizeably larger than ourselves. Reversing up the hill all the way to where had started was not really an option so we have to drive on this slope to let it pass - we are at like a 50 degree angle to the road - none of us wanted to move an inch save the van topple over sideways (we wouldn't be too hurt, but we'd lose the deposit, be stuck and block a fairly main road) all except for Melanie who wants to jump out the back and is rather swiftly and firmly told by everyone else to stop moving. The bus passes us, the people on the bus fairly aghast looking out their windows at our ludicrous state and we drive off of the slope and properly upright once more. Melanie can breathe again... for now. Further along the drive we come to a soft sand hill, which Lucy stalls on several times, getting part of the way up every time, but then sliding back down again. Always one for the brute force method Lucy opts for a run up and we make it over much to Team France's relief. Much to my amusement we then can't find the pools and even after consulting the map are none the wiser and so stop and ask for directions from some guys fishing on the beach - not the only one who can't use the ludicrous map.
We finally make it to the Champagne Pools which are very pretty, only separated from the ocean by some low lying rocks thus keeping all the big dangerous things out but letting all the cool funky tropical fish in. We have our picnic lunch that we'd made earlier and spend an hour or so by the pools before setting off for Indian Head around about 3pm. We park Bruce very neatly alongside some othe vans and begin climbing the hill that really should not have been done in flip flops, the majority of us later deciding to take them off and attempt the climb barefoot, but once at the top there were some pretty amazing views of Fraser Island, the Pacific Ocean and 75 Mile Beach (the beach we had traversed to get here) and took it in turns taking photos of one another with the view in the beackground. In retrospect I think its a shame we never actually got a group shot of us all from here as it was a very pretty view, but I guess there would then not have been much view left in the photo... We visit the shipwreck on the drive back to camp, which is pretty awesome and affords more photo taking before reaching camp and finding a distinct lack of spaces left. The van ahead of us that had been doing everything pretty quickly during the day had gotten there just as it was filling up and attempted to save us a space, but been rather overpowered by a convoy of yet more vans. So we continued down to the next camp site and then the next, finding them all similarly full until deciding at the last campsite that it isnt strictly necessary for there to be 2 roads into the campsite as long as everyone can get out in the morning and some consulting with the other vans saw that everyone would indeed be able to get out in the morning even if we did park on the road. So we parked Bruce and began setting up camp when the thuird van of our group showed up similarly unble to find a space for the night and so we made some room for them on our road (seeing as they themselves would be the only thing preventing us from leaving the next day) and both went about setting up camp and making dinner.
Tonight's delicacy - pasta spirals and mince - was cooked by Sophie and was delicious. Team France who you make recall insisted on buying macaroni from the store did create a bit of a hassle given the fact we only had 2 hobs and 2 pans and thus had to wait until we were done cooking before they could then make their own pasta, but all ended up fine in the end and once we were done with our pasta had some cake before begining to toast from marshamallows. The other team was VERY jealous of our dessert and marshmallows. I enjoyed how quickly mine seemed to catch flame all the time - rather over zealous marshmallow toasting. We drink and chat with the other van, one of whom went to Newcastle and me and Lucy have a good gab with before going to bed pretty early at 9:30pm this evening with Ben and Nic. I wear literally every item of clothing I own, unlike our previous campsite this one is pretty much right on the beach and totally unsheltered from the sea breeze, I'm a little cold, but the tent is rather snug with 4 of us in it and its not too bad.
We wake up at 8:15am have breakfast and pack up camp again, getting up into the crawl space again to load up the van, not the easiest given I am obviously weak as f***. We get the other group to take a few Bruce/group photos and then on out to Lake MacKenzie with the other van following behind us, everytime we go over a large bump or a particularly rocky part turning around to watch what it looks like to an outsider - answer: hilarious. I start drinking goon early given the fact we have thus far only managed to go through one and a half of our 3 bags and find that it make a marvelous morning beverage. We arrive at Lake MacKenize around 10:45 and the Lake is amazing - the water is beyond clear, it is crystal clear, you can see every last thing in it, all the way to the sand lying at the bottom and the sand - brilliant white, the whitest sand I have ever seen. I sunbathe and chat with everyone from all the vans whilst Lucy plays in the water with Jens and Ben and eventually Nic. Ben then stupidly volunteers to let me and Lucy bury him in the sand and fashion him into a mermaid. He shivers a lot which keeps breaking up the (really fine) sand, but instead of showing sympathy for how cold he is we tell him to man up. The end result was very good tho and worth all the photos the group took of it I reckon... Ben might disagree however. Around 12 Jens and I went to go and get the remains of all our food for lunch and brought it down to the beach blatantly ignoring all of the " DO NOT BRING FOOD" signs. Some crazy man startsd shouting at some other group for having fuccked up the wheels of their van up in some fashion and obviously having been driving irresponsibly - possibly true, but very easy to do on the island, practically necessary in many parts, and we felt quite sorry for the guy he was shouting at in particular as he certainly didn't deserve to have the entire beach involved in the argument. We took some awesome beach jumping photos of us all and Sven took some awesome half in the water half out the water photos of the lake, which looked awesome, because of how clear it is the only way you can tell half of it is underwater is because of the water line across it.
We leave the Lake about 2:30pm and head for port arriving around 3:15pm. I continue to drink my goon, cleverly disguised in a water bottle since we have long since ran out of water and wander down the docks killing time til the ferry is ready to leave when we spot 2 humpack whales in the distance. Suffice to say about 50 backpackers are then running for the end of dock to get the best view and then watch as they come right up to the island and float about just behind the ferry, which we then board to get even better views (and photos). Unfortunately whilst the whales are we they are we can't leave and so people slowly began to lose interest in the whales and settled in for the ride and some chatting and as if the whales knew they left from behind us and off we went.
Back ashore we head back to the warehouse to return the tent and all the supplies and get Bruce signed off, when the guy claims we have made a dent in the front bumper - not true. He then claims we may have not realised doing it but because of where it is - the front bumper behind the grill - we could not very well not have noticed doing it. We complain a lot and the guy says we'll have to take it up with the boss when we arrive back at the hostel. In the van we're looking through our photos of the van to see if we can find any with a good enough shot of the front to prove it was there to begin with, but all we have are assorted phtos of us sitting on Bruce, which isn't really going to help our cause. Then we arrive and the boss doesn't care and says I quote "thats it?" totally dismissing the damage the warehouse guy had been wanting to charge us $200 for. We sign up for the pizza (which is thankfully much more popular than it was the last time we had attempted to sign up for it) and begin a queue for the shower. Washed, pretty we reconvene outside by the pool for our pizza buffet (and some goon) before heading back into our unit and having a look at Sven's awesome photos of the entire island on his laptop. We say goodbye to everybody, which is genuinely sad, and get everyone's full names for facebook purposes. Our little trip has reached end. Sophie and Matt head back across the road to the adjacent hostel and the rest of us (Excluding Team France who didn't want pizza) head to bed. The end of the adventure.
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