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Tuesday 29th May we left Brisbane for Noosa....Karin in Tow!!!! Noosa is a tiny little place, fairly posh looking (far too posh for us backpackers anyway) with only 2 days here we booked a 2 hour surf lesson. The 2 hour surf lesson turned into 3 hours as we was having such a laugh, the instructor thought we were hysterical, in 3 hours i didnt stand up once, spent most of the time on my a/se!!! I can honestly say its the hardest sport ever, i felt like a cripple for days afterwards, i thought i was going to die!!!So the rest of the day was spent laying down!!!!
Thursday 31st June we left Noosa for Hervey Bay where we would start our Fraser Island tour. 6 hours on a bus and we finally arrived. The Fraser Island groups were made up of groups of 11 people each given a 4x4 and a map and sent on their way to drive around the largest sand island in the world. All camping (yes camping!!!) and cooking equipment etc was included but the night before we had to go shopping for all 11 people...not easy. In our group we had 3 Scottish Lads, Berrie, Ross and Witchell, Caroline and Matthew from Switzerland, Karin from Canada, Lauren and Claire from UK and me, lin and lich. Off we trot to the supermarket, the girls up front thinking logically about what we might need over the next 3 days while the boys were bringing water guns and water balloons up saying that they thought they were essential!!!!!! All food shopping eventaully done we headed back past the Bottleo (off licence) to pick up enough alcohol to last the 3 days......we had enough to last us 3 weeks!!!!
Saturday 2nd June and the start of Fraser, we were all up early (6am!!!) ready to pack up the van with everything and get on out way. By 9.30 ish we were all packed up, all in the van on on our way to catch the barge over to the island. There were 4 drivers in our group, Me, Alicia, Witchell and Ross. Of course the boys had next to no interest in driving but were happy enough to sit in the back and start drinking......boys like that give Scottsmen a bad name :) The weather wasnt great but having a good group we made the most of it. Before it got too dark we found a spot to pitch up our tents and put some food on.....the drinking had already started which probably explains the state of why our tents were put up totally wrong!! Luckly we had a regular camper in our group so to the rescue she came and sorted the tents out properly! It was pretty cold outside at night camping on the beach and so we pretty much stayed in the van drinking and having a laugh, being up so early the majority of us were in bed by about 11ish !!!
The next morning we were all woken up by a rather excited Ross, he thought we had all slept in and were 2 hours behind schedule...not the case..believe me i didnt let him forget that!!! Another day where the weather wasnt great but we knew we'd make the most of it. We all piled into the van an headed for a place called Indian Heads where we were promised we'd see sharks and sting rays and even turtles......yeah right!! A) it was raining so hard we couldnt see hands in front of our faces and 2) we stayed there long enough to get soaked to the skin and still didnt see a bloody thing!!! As the weather was so bad we decided against visiting some of the sights as they were mainly for swimming (over my dead body in this weather!!) instead we headed for one of the Fresh Water Creeks, by the time we had got there it had stopped raining for the first time in hours!!! Magic!!! We took some lovely pictures and chilled out for a bit before heading back out to find somewhere to camp for the night. We pitched out tents ( a little better than the night before) and got on the beach for a few games of Wheel barrow races and a few games of frisbie.
Before long the rain started again so we were back in the van, with nothing better to do the drinking started even earlier today and was much messier than the night before!!The scottish boys got their kilts out (why they thought they would need them on an all sand island is beyond me?!?!) for the crack and i somehow ended up with one on......Anyways after plenty of drinking we decided to call it a night and make a run in the (still) pouring rain, we made it to our tents only to find them completely flooded, not just damp im talking puddles!!! There was nothing for it but to sleep in the van, 7 out of 11 of us slept in there, well hardly slept as you had to try sleep sitting up but you get the idea! To add insult to inhury we had to be up at 5.30 the next morning........it was something close to hell at one stage!
Everyone was awake by 5am anyway if they wasnt wet, they were cold and if they wasnt cold they were hungry. We had to be up this early as there were driving restrictions on the beach's durning certain times if we didnt leave between 6 and 7 we had to wait til after 10.30. We all managed to get the tents down (still in the rain) pack everything away and get on our way, today we were headed to Lake McKenzie which is voted one of the most beautiful beach's in the world....it certainly was!!! Someone was watching over that day, as soon as we pulled up to the Lake the rain stopped and the sun came out......the beach was amazing, the early start had been worth it!!! We spent a few hours chilling out and taking plenty of photo's before we headed back to the barge to get the boat over and go back to the hostle,
Back on proper land we cleaned the van out and de-sanded everything (not as easy as it sounds!) We had enough food left over to feed an army so Karin volunteered to make every one a Spag Bowl as our last meal together. We had time for a shower and some food before we had to head off, on the move again we were leaving Hervey Bay for Airlie Beach (a lovely 11 hours on the bus to look forward to) and the start of our Whitsundays tour.
Wednesday 6th June and the day to start the Whitsundays sailing tour. We caught back up with the Scottish boys who were a day behind us in getting to Airlie, we had an obligatory catch up drink in the pub (it had been all of 24hrs since we last saw them!!) Not long after we had to head off to our briefing meeting so we left the boys in the pub (they wernt doing whitsundays) in the briefing meeting we also caught up with Caroline and Matthew who were going to be on our boat, bonus, as well as Karin who was still (god bless her) with us. After the meeting all back to the pub for one more drink :) Walking down to the Marina we said our goodbyes to the boys despite their best efforts of bunging the skipper $50 to get on the boat!!! Our boat was named the Pride of Airlie and was pretty cool and there were between 50 and 60 people on the boat.
After about 2 hours of sailing along we arrived at the island we were going to be sleeping on, South Molle. Convieniently (dont know for them or for us) we arrived in time for happy hour at the bar. Dinner was served after about an hour and after that the 18-30 style drinking games begun (im sure im getting too old for all that!!). An extreemly early start of 6.30am was had on Thursday, after a breakfast of bacon and eggs we were setting sail and headed for WhiteHaven Beach, another voted one of the worlds most amazing. The weather wasnt great to begin with but brightened up enough to soak up the sun once we were there and play a few rounds of wheel barrow races and a couple of games of tug'o'war. This beach was stunning (see pictures) and was definately the highlight so far, the pictures just dont do the places justice!! Back on board the boat we had lunch and spent the next few hours leisurely sailing back towards South Molle Island while taking in the breath taking sights along the way. Back on South Molle we had a few drinks and dinner, after such an early start i headed for bed......on route i did see one of the irish lads in he room next door, passed out on his bed wearing a girls thong!!!.......apparently the story was he did it to give everyone a laugh but was too drunk to make it out of his room and ended up passing out on his bed.........i didnt really buy it myself!!!!
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