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We went to Hervey Bay to meet up with Cat again who'd gone slightly ahead of us. Hervey Bay is a very quiet town with a nice beach, but almost as quiet as Rockhampton. The main attraction of Hervey Bay is that it is the gateway to Fraser Island. So we booked our trip to Fraser Island and had to attend a workshop about about the island which is basically a massive sand dune. We hired some massive 4 by 4 vehicles and the workshop was to show us how to drive them safely. It was also a workshop to warn us about dingo's!! I think they had some problems with dingo's and children a few years ago. They told us that we should be wary of them and if we come across one we should back away from them with our arms folded. We were also told not to go to the loo on our own (when camping) as the dingo could strike while we were squatting! What a lovely thought!
The next day we picked up our 4by4's, massive Toyota's. They were so cool! There were 3 vehicles going together. 2 of the others had 8 people in and we had 6 (we all knew each other in our van). We had loads of food and camping gear loaded in the back and we all set off in convoy together! Our first stop was to go across to the island on the ferry. This involved reversing the vehicles onto the ferry! Quite funny to watch when you've just picked up the vans and no one knows quite how to use them yet! Apparently the locals come down to the dock every day just to come and watch the tourists reverse on!!
The ferry crossing was good, there were dolphins swimming next to the boat when we got on and it was a lovely sunny day.
So we set off in our vans, David and Steve up front in the cabin and Beth, Cat, Sian and me in the back with the cargo! It was quite a bumpy trip to start with! It's not easy driving through sand which is what the whole island is made of!! We all took it in turns to drive! Not everyone was too impressed with Cat's driving but I had fun sat up the front with her! She drove on the beach with lots of wash outs which you can't quite see the depth of until you're on top of them and apparently it was quite a bumpy ride in the back!! I loved driving up the beach! The van slipped about a bit but it was so much fun! The biggest thing I've ever driven!
We were given an itinerary which all 3 vans had to follow. So the first day we did a bit of driving up the beach and stopped off at a creek and a shipwreck. Very cool sights! We also came across our first dingo! I don't know what all the fuss was about! It was just like a dog! It totally ignored all of us and just went about its business of looking for food! Even when people were crouching down to take pictures it wasn't fussed!
At around 4pm we stopped to pitch up our tents on the beach. They weren't too difficult to put up, well I kind of just watched them being put up but they didn't look difficult to put up!! Then there was nothing else to do really so we cooked spaghetti on a little gas stove and started drinking 'goon'!! All 3 of the vans sat together and played drinking games and it was a real laugh! We all conked out at about 11pm, although it felt a lot later than that!!
We were up quite early the next day and several people in our van were nursing pretty bad hangovers!!!! I was ok luckily! The people who were drinking the red goon seemed to be the worse for wear and weren't feeling too good when we set off in the van!!!
The weather was really miserable that day too. We went to a viewpoint on the island where you can sometimes see sharks but the weather was so rubbish we couldn't really see anything. We also went on a 3 hour walk to a big lake with a mssive sand dune next to it which I couldn't resist rolling down! The lake was so beautiful but if the weather had been nicer we probably would have got in! Instead we stood and looked at it for a while and then head back to the van!
We pitched up the tents around 4pm again in a camp site this time so we had proper toilets, yay! We were also in an enclosed area so we didn't have to 'worry' about dingo's. We cooked some food, which was actually really good considering it was done camping style! We had nothing to do again in the evening so we drank some more goon! Some of the people nursing hangovers didn't risk it again! We sat up chatting until around 11pm and then had another uncomfortable night's sleep in the tent, although it was a bit more comfy than on the beach!
No hangovers for the final day on Fraser and the weather was beautiful! The first thing we went to see was a brown lake that looked like cola but was made brown from the leaves off the trees. The leaves are also good for helping with colds! The next place we visited was a big, clear lake with sand that we used to exfoliate (and wash ourselves with as no one had had a shower over the 3 days on the island!!!). It was such a lovely lake and we all took some really lovely photo's around that area. I was so glad the weather stayed nice for that part of the trip. We had to drive back to Hervey Bay that afternoon and drop the vans off. It was such a good trip!
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