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Hervey Bay & Fraser Island
We arrived in Hervey Bay at 1.30 in the morning, I had a nightmare coming off the bus nearly leaving my iPod and actually forgetting my phone. It's a good job it was a rubbish one. We caught a taxi to the hostel where are keys were waiting for us in a safe, we then had to get through the gate which the owner had gave us the wrong code for. I opted to climb over in a Mission Impossible / James Bond type manner and let everyone in. We found our room and I shot gunned the only bottom bunk left, Jeeves then got a bed, but Tom had problems it appeared the bloke on the checkout had made another error and over booked the room. Tom was in the middle not knowing what to do, so he decided to get cosy and share with Jeeves.
The next morning we woke up and had the complimentary free breakfast, cereal and toast with various spreads. Our intentions then turned to Fraser Island. We wanted to hire our own four wheel drive and tear it up over there by ourselves but for that we needed more people to join us, so we spent the next part of our day scouring gumtree for people and making various different creative adverts to try and entice people to come with us on our adventure. We took a stroll and put the signs up around various hostels, hotels and motels. The next stop on the agenda was Dan Murphy's to get the alcohol for the night and for the Fraser Island trip. We also bought the food for the trip and I managed to get myself a $16 new mobile phone. (My new phone number is 0434956914 if anyone wants it)
It's fair to say we were pleased with our efforts of the morning and afternoon. So we decided to treat ourselves with a few cheeky goons. Two new girls Belle from Teesside and Lucy from Oxford had just moved in the room and it wasn't long before we had persuaded them to come for a drink too. We played a bit of Hi Jack and soon we had more people join us first a Dutch girl called Pascal, then Neta from Israel made an appearance and we were also joined by two Scottish sisters Zoe and Jane. We had good times playing High Jack, f*** the Dealer and Spoons but then a few of us thought it would be a good idea to head to the beach. We tried to make a fire but was unsuccessful so we chilled out for a while looking at the stars. The next thing you know we are all naked running into the sea, apart from Belle who just had a paddle. It was a good night even though we were a little disappointed no one had responded to our adverts. We still needed ideally one or two more people and everyone we were drinking with that night were already on tours. It semt like it was just going to be the three of us, but when we got in Jeeves spoke to a German girl who said she and her friends might be interested. We had hope!
The next day we woke up and did laundry and waited in hope for the German girls to say yes. There was no sign of them anywhere, so we went for a cheeky couple of schooners by the sea. There was an open mic night on so we decided to sign up Tom to do it, even though he really didn't want to. The hope of the Germans the night before was drastically fading, but we got good news when our former banana working colleagues Hana and Lauren text us asking where we were on our travels. To our delight we ironed out a few issues and persuaded them to come to Fraser Island. When we got back there were two Swedish girls eyeing up one of our adverts. If they decided to go it would be ideal reducing the cost to a mere $170 when it looked like it may cost over $300. We got talking with them told them the details, and then played some drinking games with them. We must have done something right as they agreed to come to Fraser Island with us. Before long it was time to go to the pub we were at before so we could witness the open mic night. The Swedes were well up for it and said they would go up with him; they also convinced Jeeva to do the same. I planned on staying on the side-lines to video the whole shenanigans. While we waited one of the girls Alexandra taught me a Swedish dance called the Buge. We had a few drinks and then it was time to go on stage. But there was one problem Tom had bottled; he had actually run off while no one was looking. Anna, Alexandra and Jeeves all still went up and sang a couple of songs while I recorded the events, but it wasn't long before I was called up too and was strutting my stuff air guitaring and performing backing vocals to Sweet Home Alabama. We made tracks after that going to the beach again where I learnt various Swedish phrases, words and how to count to fifty. We headed back and watched the videos of the night. The Swedes, especially Anna was very embarrassed with her performance.
The next day we booked Fraser and tried to book another night at the hostel, unfortunately there was only one bed left and two others would have to be moved into the room which they were still renovating. Jeeves shot gunned the only bed left. Warwick on reception then presented with us with a great offer, a boat leaving the marina needed two guys to serve drinks to an 18th birthday party on board. As you can expect we were all interested. We decided that we would have a s***head tournament and that the person who was the s***head ten times would be left behind. Jeeves lost, narrowly beating Tom to the s*** head title. Me feeling very generous and doing something I would probably regret at a later date gave up my spot for Jeeves. My reason, well there are a few, I needed to shave but I was too lazy, the girls were 18 and I am 28, a full 10 years older, they'd be all twilight and Justin Bieber while I'm American Pie and Oasis /Arctic Monkeys. And probably mainly because Jeeves was only in Australia for three weeks and I wanted him to experience as much as he could in that time. I had plenty of time in Oz so who knows I may get lucky and get the opportunity again. With that decided we went and got our last bits for Fraser Island while Tom was assigned to go and do the safety briefing for the Fraser Island trip.
So that night Jeeves and Tom went to the boat to cater for the party. I was left alone, but not for long Alex and Anna (The Swedes) took me under their wing so I wasn't alone. I helped them make some pasta for the Fraser trip the next day and then we played some drinking games. We then decided to head down to the pub we were in last night where it was karaoke night. I belted out some classics such as Wonderwall by Oasis, Let Me Entertain You by Robbie and Land Down Under. The Swedes sang a bit of Chris Brown - With You. It's fair to say we were pretty tipsy, we had been singing, dancing drinking all night the pub was closing o we decided to walk back. This took longer than expected as we were all drunk and I may have decided to jump in a random swimming pool naked. The owner wasn't impressed with this so we ran to the beach. We slowly got back to the hostel where Tom and Jeeves were waiting outside. We had expected them arriving back much later, they told us about their night and it appeared it wasn't that great. I had a great result missing the night! We de-briefed them on our night and everyone went to sleep while I waited for the arrival of Hana and Lauren who were on a 14 hour bus from Airlie Beach. Eventually they arrived around 3.30am after a delay in Bundaberg. I was still drunk and kept everyone up until around 5 discussing my adventures of the coast. It wasn't a great idea seen as though we had to be up at 6.30am to go on our Fraser trip.
I woke up the next morning surprisingly fresh. Tom went to get the Jeep we called Joyce and we loaded the car with our stuff. It was a little cramped with seven of us in one Jeep but we could manage. It was now time for our Fraser trip to begin! We crossed the ferry, drove around the rough winding paths only a four wheel drive could handle, I must have hit my head on the ceiling at least twenty times and then headed to Lake McKenzie. It was a beautiful lake and beach with clear waters. This was the life! It's these sort of things that makes you forget about the little negatives of travelling. We had a ball and played some games, piggy in the middle and water cricket / rounder's before we headed off to the shipwreck and then champagne pools which was also beautiful. We chilled out there for a while even get bitten by a few little fish and then headed to a lookout point here we would have possibly seen Whales, unfortunately we didn't see any. So we headed off to make up camp. We got all our tents up had a barbeque and then you may have guessed it we played some more drinking games. We got pretty drunk, I ended up in a tent with Alex and Anna reading Fifty Shades of Grey to them (There you go Dad you wanted more Fifty Shades there you go J)
The next morning we woke up early through the sun beating down on our tent. Everyone was a little tired from the previous night's antics. We had a couple of Sausage sandwiches and then I thought I'd try my hand with the four by four and give it a whiz along the beach. Unfortunately I couldn't we had a disaster, the battery had gone! We were stranded! I walked off looking for help, while the others stayed and tried to flag down any passing jeeps. I found nothing so headed back where they had pulled someone over! Result we were saved! Our relief as short lived when the guy couldn't get us going. Morale was low, high tide would be in soon then we would be even more stranded. But then another Jeep pulled over, we tried to push start it, but in the deep sand we struggled to push the jeep back more than a foot. Then his mates arrived, like a scene from a superhero movie, there jeep appeared through he sand and they pulled out the jump leads, surely we were saved now. No it wasn't looking promising. The battery must have been really flat, we got murmurs when we tried to start it but it was struggling. The guys were giving us as much time as they could but they also had to beat high tide to get to their destination. One last go the man declared then we will have to shoot off. Everyone held their breath and crossed their fingers. Tom started the car, a murmur, a stutter, it started. Joyce had pulled through! Everyone let out a sigh of relief and we thanked the guys for helping us.
We then headed to a lake, I can't remember the name it began with G and it was quite long, I'm going to guess at Guangower or something long and weird like that. It wasn't a great lake which is why I don't remember it, so we head it Lake Walaby via he scenic drive which was cool but once again I got any head shots due to the rough surfaces of the tracks, I was sure I'd probably get concussion after the trip. The lake was the at the bottom of massive sand dunes so we rolled down them into the lake and ran down and generally had a good time messing about. We managed to do 50 keepy uppys in the water between us. Something which must have took us two hours to do. It was time to head back to Hervey Bay now. So we headed back to the ferry station, we had a bit of time to kill so we played some volleyball before we left. We had completed Fraser, we had had and amazing time, we had survived some drama, saw wonderful views and lakes, didn't get attacked by dingoes. All in all it was a very successful trip.
We'd got back to Hervey Bay and everyone was a bit jaded, so we only had a couple of glasses of goon while we sorted out the bus to our next destination Noosa where we all decided to go the day after!
So until the tales of Noosa stay safe and Take care
Adi
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