Quite a lot to catch up on so I'm gonna have to sum up some parts pretty briefly. From airlie beach we headed to fraser island where after spending a couple days weighing up whether to drop a few hundi dollars on driving a 4x4. We decided to go for it even though the weather didnt seem great and the week before 2 people had died after rolling their 4x4 9 times, yes 9. the morning we left the weather improved massively. There were 10 of us in our 4x4 and it was a 4 tonne behemouth. After getting onto the island and an unfortunate incident involving my ipod the car stero and N-dubz we went to lake mackenzie which was amazing. After that it was my turn to drive and after going through the forrest we made it to the beach to drive the last 30km up to the camp site we were staying at. I thought that asthe speed limit was 85km/h on the beach that it would be easy, this was a massive miscalulation. As I turned onto the 'beach' there literally was no beach; it had completely dissappeared as the tide had come in. What happened next was burnt into the memory of everyone sat/aboard the jeep/boat. The first thing to break was the windscreen wipers (pretty essential on a beach with no lighting or road markings) and then the spirits of the passnegers one by one. We were completely battered by the surf with waves crashing into us and picking up the jeep and floating it along the beach. Water regularly poured in through the door 'seals' and one german girl cried the entire drive along the beach. The shock on our faces was compounded by the fact that the briefing video shows jeep caning it along the beach which is 30m wide in perfect sunshine... We finally made it and everyone was high-fiving as if we had just returned successfully from space. There we're a few other incidents involving our group burning copious amounts of bush wood which the ranger nearly fined us a 1000dollars for, but the trip was awesome and the weather sublime. I should point out that Lis also drove the 4x4 across the beach; no mean feat for a girl who drives a car/bug that weighs less than a tonne.

Next we wdrove down to sydney and stayed at the 'the maze', which was a complete hole (people aged 80+ were living there, no joke). to top things off i fell ill and had a fever and flu-like symptoms, which made me think it was swine-time again. Lis touched my forehead and said i'd be fine. I immediately went to the docs and they gave me monsterous anti-biotics and told me to rest. Alas we then flew to fiji. Btw the weather in syd was rubbish so we didnt really so much there unfortunately!