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Nat and Beck Go Large!
On Monday we got up at silly oclock (5 in the morning - I kid you not) in order to get all our junk together for our little adventure. First duty of the day was checking out all of our equipment and making sure that we had all the stuff we needed so that we didn't die on the island. It had to be loaded into our verrrrry top heavy 4x4 van before we could attend a meeting about how to drive the rickety old rust buckets - errr I mean 'the nearly new vans' - and more about not letting Dingos get you when you're having some alone time behaind a bush!
The woman who gave us the talk at the meeting was a little bit tapped. She talked for at least 20 minutes without taking a single breath and managed to chat/feel up about 90% of the teenage males in the room. Also, she doesn't brush her hair. After that we all piled into the van and Chris drove us to the barge. Thankfully it was nothing like the ones in Cambodia and we spent a lovely 40 mins lying in the sun on the crossing from hervey bay.
When we first got onto the island we felt the full force of sitting at the back of a 4x4 van, it was a tad bumpy to say the least! We drove to the main lake in the middle of Island called Lake McKenzie. We parked up and then had to walk about 300 meters through the 'bush' to reach the lake itself. It was honestly one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen, it was like something out of a film or on one of the posters they sell in the student union in fresher's week. You sort of step out of the trees and there's a white sand beach leading to the aqua coloured water surrounded on all sides by trees. Every one has more or less the same idea so it soon starts to get busy, but its relatively big so its not too annoying. The boys spent the first hour or so throwing themselves into the water a la David Hasslehoff, and the official Hoff-off was born. From there we decided it would be a good idea to go for a drive along the beach - there was a boy driving so needless to say we drove full pelt along the sand and well past the area we were supposed to stay in. By the time we realised, we'd reached the other side of the island and it was time to go and set up camp.
You have two choices for camping on Fraser, you can go to one of the camp sites (but you're not allowed to drink or make noise after 9pm) or camp in the sand dunes on the beach. Being decidedly hard core we opted for the dunes where we managed to cause havoc and be totally rowdy until a very crazy 9.30pm!!!! Well we had been up since 5am - and we're not as young as we once were! To be fair even the young uns only lasted until 10.30. We dined on burgers, sausages and sand, and washed it all down with warm goon and some more sand. The younger boys split up into two tents, the Swedish girls took the third and we comandeered the fouth (which we manged to put up ourselves with just a few instructions from the ex-scouts). The '3man' tent was a snug fit for Nat and me, so at over 6ft Chris decided the back of the van was the best option. In the morning we woke up to find a a random, semi-clad bird in the front seat of our truck. Your guess is as good as ours as to where she came from - even she wasn't sure! She wasn't very popular though, she'd managed to squash the Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, which didn't sit well at all with the boys who had fought hard in the battle of cereal the day before.
After packing all of our stuff in the van, we set off again for another day of sight seeing. This time Nat was in control of the vehicle - she sat like a Smurf/Garden Gnome with the seat as close to the wheel as possible. To those in the back it looked as though it was driving itself as you really couldn't see her over the seat! We drove to a campsite to wash our dishes and ourselves and then headed to Eli Creek. Apparently you can float down the Creek but it was only a ft deep in certain areas so we walked it instead.
Becky took the wheel next, and we headed in land to Lake Wabby (or Lake Wobbily as it was christened). Again we parked up and had to walk about 1km through the bush to the bottom of a giant sand dune. Basically the lake is being taken over by sand that is blown from the beach. You have to climb over the dune to get to the lake where catfish think you're food and suck on your toes (very freaky I tell thee). The practically vertical drop of the sand dune is apparently the perfect site for Hoffing, as you can run and chuck yourself of the side, leg it down and then throw yourself into the water! Alternately you can walk down very slowly and carefully so as not to get a gob/bikini full of sand and sit quietly at the waters edge. The hike back up the dune is anything but glamorous and can by done at a run (before throwing yourself off again) or at a snails pace and include some heavy weazing. The choices are endless!
That night we camped at the beach again, this time with 5 other trucks. We dined on two types of pasta (big tubes and small tubes cos the boys didn't realise they were different sizes when they picked them up), bolognaise and sand. We washed this down with cold goon (cos there was enough space in the coolers by this time) with a side of sand. Also we met a bloke from the Wirral called Kevin who looked a bit like Jack! That night several Dingos tried to get into our tent to eat us. Luckily enough we'd payed attention to the 'Dingo safety' video - we had a massive hissy fit and banged the sides of the tent until they went away.
On the last day, sporting a massive hang over, we went on a forest walk to another lake. Unfortunately Hoffing had to be kept to a minimum due to the delicate nature of the boys heads. We had pretty much run out of time by this time and had to head back to the barge to meet everyone else. We'd been pretty lucky during our 3 days on the island as far as insect bites etc were concerned - That is until the last 5 minutes. We'd mainly been bitten by these massive blue bottle things, they hurt but dont leave a mark so dont actually count. However in the last 5 min of our trip the majority of people, Nat included, were attacked by sand flies and ended up with lovely patchy legs. We all piled onto onto the barge and headed to the Cornetto/Pie/Diet Coke shop for some food that didn't include sand. We were all tired but content in the truck when it came to offloading - until Becky nearly fell out when the back door when opened suddenly. Natalie - being the kind, loyal, loving person she is - nearly peed!
Lots of love Beck and Nat xxx
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