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Was up at 6am this morning to catch the 6 hour bus down to Rainbow Beach! Somehow managed to be chatty enough to get talking to a couple of people on the bus from the hostel and met two nice germans - Sven and Leonie. Chatted to Sven for a bit on the bus and then gave in to sleep for most of the journey!
Got to Rainbow Beach where the greyhound stops right outside the hostels which was really handy! We went to check in and on my way to my room I met Tom who had been in Cairns at the same time as me! He had just arrived that morning, but was heading out to Fraser Island the day after me. Was good to see him though! I went and dumped my stuff and then we went for a wander to the shop for some food, then headed down to the beach for an hour or two. I had to be back for 4 for a briefing about what was happening on Fraser Island the next day.
Went to the briefing meeting at half 4 and met an irish couple who were heading out the day after me who were really nice so chatted to them for a bit while I was waiting for it to start. Then got a big surprise when Christina and Julia (german girls from Cairns hostel) walked in! I didn't even know they were there! They were staying at a hostel called Frasers next door, but they were fully booked for the Fraser Island tour so they were coming out with the Dingoes group! Was so weird, but awesome to see them again. We ended up waiting for like an hour for someone to even come and start talking to us, which was a bit of a melt, but eventually we got a safety video which was straight out of the 80s. Finally the guy came out and told us basically that the video was a load of rubbish…good use of time then! He told us about driving, safety and stuff, keeping the dingoes (wild dog things…) away. He was a bit scary, talking about people dying and stuff (you can't go in the sea at all because the currents are so strong and there are sharks everywhere etc). But didn't manage to put me off! We were sorted into our groups of about 8 or 9 and told to read some safety stuff and decide what alcohol we wanted to bring as a group as we could buy it all together from the company.
I was a little bit worried about my group right from the start…we had 3 swedish - a couple and another girl all travelling together - who were very reluctant to talk to the rest of us. They were all 19 - straight out of school is standard for the Swedish people here! There was 2 finnish girls who seemed quite nice and were a bit older (mid 20s). Then there was an older german guy (think he was 29) who in all honesty seemed a bit weird from the outset…and an 18 year old german girl who seemed nice enough. Overall, the group didn't seem very exciting…although I hate judging people straight away (but this time I definitely turned out to be right!). We went through all the paperwork…determined that no-one was willing to share alcohol with me so I just bought a box of goon for myself (yuck!) and to be honest I got out of there as soon as possible because they were pretty boring already haha.
I was feeling a bit iffy about the trip after meeting my group but I knew that when we were on the island they might turn out to be really nice and we would also be mixing with other groups so wasn't too worried! I called my mum for ages which was awesome as it had been a while since we had a long chat. Then I went back to the room and the irish couple I had met in the bar earlier were there! Chatted to them for a bit then we went and had a few drinks in the bar which was nice, and we ended up meeting a group of northern irish and chatting for ages - it turned out one of them had just graduated from Heriot-Watt as well!! Very small world! Can't even remember his name now though…Headed to bed reasonably early as I knew I would have an early start.
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