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Life in Oz!
I hit snooze twice before I got out of bed but didn't care because the girls were somewhat loud when they trickled in at 12:30 and again at 3:30. The front desk doesn't open until 7 or 8 on Sunday mornings but she agreed to meet me at 6 so I could get my $10 key deposit back. I woke the girls by 6:15 and they were ready and checked out by 6:30 so we had plenty of time to get to the transit centre. The third floor of the transit centre is all different tour companies and shuttle/bus services to the airport. We found the section we needed to be in and waited. The tour guide arrived about 7am. I figured we would be on a 4WD bus with 20 or so people but he came in a 4WD jeep-thing. We were the only ones there and we had to stop by a hotel to pick up a couple. The couple was very nice. They lived in Sydney but were originally from England, which we had guessed by their accents. It was just the 5 of us and the tour guide which was really nice. We drove to the port in Redcliffe, which is a suburb of Brisbane and it took about 40 minutes to get there. It wasn't a nice day with the weather but it wasn't bad either so there weren't many people on the ferry. It was quiet too because it is the Queen's Birthday long weekend so most people went over yesterday. We got free coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We went for the hot chocolate that burnt all of our tongues and didn't have much taste and a sausage roll for breakfast. The seats on the ferry aren't very conducive for sleeping but I managed to get a small nap in. The 2hour ferry wasn't bad but quite chilly. Once we got close to Moreton, we headed for the vehicle to warm up. Our guide had left the lights on the 4WD on the whole time for some reason and the battery was dead when we tried to leave. We got a jump start and commenced our drive along the beach. Moreton Island is similar to Fraser as it is all sand and mostly park. It's much smaller than Fraser but has many of the same feature. Beautiful sandy beaches, bush in the centre, fresh water lakes scattered about and freshwater streams running into the ocean. Our first stop was near Tangalooma Resort. As a guest you can feed wild dolphins which we looked into but it was too expensive to stay there. They also sunk random stuff so the boats would have somewhere calm to anchor and it also makes for good snorkelling. We didn't stay long before we hit the roads through the bush to The Desert where we went sand boarding! It was terribly windy and often hard to see with all of the sand blowing. We had to climb a steep sand dune and then we laid on a small plywood like board and our tour guide pushed us down the hill. We had to hold the front of the board up so it would dig down into the sand and we would face plant. It was fun going down the hill but we were covered in heaps of sand, the good thing about that was we didn't have to stop for lunch. We went down twice and the other couple on the tour was nice enough to video tape us on my camera going down the dune. We were then off to the campsite where we were going to have lunch. He needed to prepare it yet so he gave us directions to the Blue Lagoon. It was only a short 7-minute walk to the lake. It was a pretty lake and it instantly reminded me of ones at home. It is fairly small, clear and chilly. We didn't get to stay long but there wasn't much to do their either. We had sandwiches for lunch and lamingtons for desert. Lamingtons are a small square cake snack with chocolate and coconut on the outside. After lunch we walked down to the beach while he cleaned up. It was a beautiful day when the sun was out and it was relaxing to walk along the beach. We found some pipis to dig up and watch burry themselves again. When our tour guide stopped to pick us up, we headed up the hill to the lighthouse. We drove most of the way up the hill so we didn't have far to walk. We had amazing views all the way to the lighthouse and it was hard to leave. We were hoping to spot some whales, sharks and dolphins but all we saw were a few turtles come up for air. It was disappointing to only see the turtles but the view was still amazing. It almost felt like we were back on Indian Head at Fraser. We had to leave the lighthouse so we could see Honeymoon Bay. It was worth leaving the lighthouse for. It was a short 4 minute walk to get there and down some stairs. It was a big rocky outcrop that had heaps of rock pools all over. We spent our time climbing around on the rocks checking out all of the pools and what lived inside. There were many snails all over, little fish, a crab or 2 and coral-like plant life. There was even a couple small water falls that were very pretty. Before we knew it, it was time to go and we hadn't even made it to the top of the rocks yet. We had about an 11K drive back to where the ferry was. It was a bumpy ride back like most of the roads were and we drove through Bulwer, one of the small towns on the island. All of the houses were situated really close together and very small but most were only holiday homes anyway. A garage and convenience/grocery store were the only businesses and had everything that you would need while on the island. It didn't take long before we emerged from the bush and backed onto the ferry. We got another free drink so Joanna and I got another not-so-tasty hot chocolate. It was a rather rough ride back but somehow I managed to get a small sleep in anyway. The sunset was pretty but the waves were sending lots of spray over the ferry so we couldn't go outside in fear of getting soaked, it was cold too so that also deterred us. The woman that worked in the food booth brought the ferry driver's puppy down for us to play with. It was adorable and loved the attention. It took us just over 2 hours to get back because of the wind. We all crawled in and the tour guide dropped off the couple at their hotel again and us at the Transit Centre. We arrived about 6:45 and we found a train to bring us back to the coast that left at 7:30. That gave us some time to eat but about the only thing open yet in the food court was McDonalds. We talked all the way back on the train and arrive at uni around 9:30pm. We were all pretty tired so we headed back to our apartments. I tried calling Linda because she is leaving tomorrow but I didn't get an answer so I was sad because that mean I wouldn't get to say goodbye to her. I was pretty tired but spent some time on the internet looking at airline prices for my weeks of travel and some ideas for tours.
Sorry I didn't get any photos up of the weekend, I ran out of time before leaving to backpack! I will try to get them up asap when I get home.
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