G'day Everyone!!

Over the past 2 weeks we did the 2 best things on the east coast; Fraser Island and the Whit Sundays, and made our way to Magnetic Island for a few days of chilling out.

So, from rainy Noosa we headed upto Hervy Bay and prepared for Fraser Island. The Fraser Island experience consists of 3 days and 2 nights roaming around the largest sand island in the world in a massive 4x4 with 7 other people, camping out, and checking out the freshwater lakes on the island. We were very lucky as we had 2 perfect days of sunshine and had a fantastic group made up of; Tom, Dom and Jamie from Surrey all 18/19 and Lauren, Kate and Elanor all 23 from Leeds. As they were the only ones over 21 they drove.

The first day consisted of an early start preparing all the camping gear and making our way over to the island. Our first stop was the amazing Lake Mckenzie. LM is the most beautiful lake on the island with perfect white sand and cyrtal clear water, we spent the afternoon here. From there we headed to our campsite, just off the beach. We had a great bbq and met up with the other 2 groups and spent the night drinking and listening to music under the stars.

The next day was once again an early start, where we headed to Indian head; a headland where we saw a small tiger shark and amazing views over the island. After this we spent the rest of the day a Lake Wabbee. This spectacular lake is hidden by huge sand dunes and in order to get to the lake you must descend a 100m steep sand dune and jump into the water. We then spent another night on Fraser at a similar campsite. The final day was taken up by avoiding the rain and cleaning up and preparing for the mainland. We then spent the night with our group, which by the end of the trip we had made very good friends of.

The WhitSundays, or what turned out to be the WetSundays. We arrived at Airlie beach, the gateway to the WhitSundays, where we spent the night. The next day we got aboard our boat where we were to spent 2 day and 2 nights. The boat we were on was a previous America's Cup winning yaught designed by NASA, so the advantage of the bad weather was the strong wind which meant we got a real taste of how quick the yaght was. We spent the first day racing to our night spot where we did a bit of snorkling and had a great meal on board. The next day was hit and miss showers and sunshine and our first port of call was Whitehaven Beach. WH beach has been voted the best beach in the world for the past 2 years, and although it was raining when we arrived, the 5 mins of sunshine we did manage to get we really saw why it was so highly thought of. We spent a few hours here and then off to another island where we did some snorkling with huge Parrot Fish. The evening consited of socialing with the group and crew and hudling under the canopy in our Flourecent orange suits to avoid the rain. The final day was short as we got back to port at 11am.

After this we headed to Magnetic island, around 5 hours north of Airlie Beach. Here we ended up staying 4 night as the weather turned out to be perfect. Here we met 4 guys from St Albans and we rented a car for the day and roamed around the island checking out the beaches and the scenery. After 4 days of chilling out we finally headed upto Cairns where we currently are.

Unfortunately due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland affecting European flight, George, Coombsey and Tom have been delayed by almost a week. This means they will have extened their stay in Thailand and will be meeting Me and Javed in Christchurch on May 4th, where we will hopefully be making it down to Queenstown for George C birthday on the 5th.

Haydn and Javed

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