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How much fun can 9 people have camping in 3 days of rain and storms...HEAPS!!!
Well we got to hervey bay and settled in for an hour and a half orientation which basically scared the living daylights out of us. We had to sign up our card details incase anything went wrong with the 4wd we were about to borrow for our 3 day beach safari in fraser island an then they let loose on all the ways we could lose our bond...
DO NOT
- drive in salt water
- drive in deep river
- go too north, south or west
- drive in 4wd on bitumen
- feed dingoes
- touch spiders, snakes or again, dingoes
- drive in soft sand
- drive in sea
- expect to sleep or use a toilet that isn't a long drop
- drive outside your tide times
- swim in the sea/tiger shark and stinger breeding ground
- forget to look out for landing planes (main road/beach doubles as runway)
...etc, after all these 'do nots', we were left to wander how many people return from this infamous fraser island alive!!!
We wrote a shopping list the night before so the morning of departure we headed to woolies, bought up our food (or the girls did whilst the boys concentrated on purchasing beer) and loaded it into the back of our bright pink 4wd...maaannlllyyy, which was also unnervingly called 'rollie' (better than explodey i suppose!) and setting off. First challenge fell on harris and that was reversing into a ferry packed with other 4 wheel drives...NB ours was the only one that was not white which would have stuck out in any case, let alone being bright pink...the boys definitely got noticed...SO FUNNY! A short trip and we arrived on fraser island in time to drive through the rainforest on sand tracks, get thrown from one side of the van to the other laughing histerically the whole way and out onto the main road of the island...the beach!
Such a surreal but amazing feeling to drive on the beach and I was only a passenger, we made our way along the beach via lake wabbi which was really nice and surreal as there is a huge sandbank next to it despite being right in the middle of the rainforest...stayed there for a while and then back to the beach to make our way a little further along and set up our first camp site on the beach and after battling with a tarpaulin to create some sort of roof over our stove, we (or should I say the amazing john) made us a brilliant bbq which filled us up and sent us to bed after a few beers by the light of our 'person whose go it is torch' (inside joke there! sorry). I say the bbq 'sent us off to bed', because it certainly didn't send us off to sleep! The roaring sea and complete monsoon amounts of rain definitely saw to it that we weren't going to sleep but going in to the night not expecting to sleep certainly made me feel a lot better than some of the others who didn't handle the night too well to say the least!
Up really early after a sleepless and soaking wet night (most of the tents leaked!) to pack up our tents, eat and drive to indian heads within our tide times. Spent a few hours at indian heads where on a calm day apparently you could see whales, turtles and dolphins...no chance today! Bummed around on the beach for a while, found a puffer fish so poked at that for a while, watching it's spines pop up...mmmm and back to the van for food and to drive back down the beach via the pinnacles, the creek, the shipwreck and in to a real campsite for a night with some shelter...another fight with the tarpaulin, another fabulous meal cooked by john (my favourite) and to bed for a little more sleep than the night before.
Up nice and early and off to lake mackenzie a gorgeous turqoise lake in the rainforest with white, silicon sand, much like in the whitsundays, relaxed there for a while, where the sun gave us a break and broke through the clouds to give us a glimpse of the real fraser island minus the greyness and rain and then back to the van to drive back to the hostel via an island resort which we found to be pretty luxurious...which in hindsight could very well have just been compared to the last 3 days...full of rain, fabulous people, brilliant food and an unreal amount of laughing!!
I love fraser island!
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