Hervey Bay, Fraser Island and the Mighty Humpback's

I have started studying campsite books like I do hotels on the internet so I managed to find a really sweet site right on the beach that luckily had a lovely little spot for us right on the front. We spent the first day walking halfway along the beach (it’s 17km!!) and doing a bit of sunbathing - well it’s been a while!!!!!!
On the second day there I decided that if I didn’t do the Indonesia blogs soon I would give up all together so spent most of the day in the internet café while Tel had his hair cut and had a bit of a drive around and general campsite activities like chatting a lot - he’s pretty good at that!!!! Blog done, well the Indonesian ones anyway, we decided it was time to go whale watching. My sea legs aren’t the best normally so when I overheard someone saying that more than half of their boat spent the trip throwing up I was a little concerned to say the least! The guy that booked the trip for us said the water was going to be worse the next day so we decided on Fraser island for one day and then whale watching the next day. We weren’t sure whether to book a one day trip to fraser island or to go for a few days, we couldn’t take Clyde over as they are all sand roads and you need 4wd, but we thought a day over there would do. We were up showered breakfasted and ready for the 6.30 pick up, that’s a pretty difficult feat when you live in a Toyota!!!! We got a half hour ferry over to fraser and then we were put onto a massive 4WD coach type thing., it was a wicked thing and we had the feeling it was gonna be a good day when our guide for the day, Shane (brilliant!), turned out to be absolutely hilarious. Fraser island is a bit of an environmental freak in the way that it has 5 different ecosystems on the island, it is the largest sand island in the world and is said to contain more sand than the Sahara desert, the sand goes down 250m in some places. The only way I can describe what it was like is by saying it felt like being in Jurassic park; some of the trees were 900 years old, they were just so enormous and because it is a national park nothing is touched so everywhere there are these 200m tree trunks lying all over the place - absolutely awe inspiring. It was pretty surreal driving along these sand roads in this massive coach and every so often a smaller vehicle in front would get stuck which led to a lot of heckling and jeering. We stopped off at Eli Creek and then we made our way over to Lake McKenzie. The water in the lake has a ph of 4.5 which means its really good for your skin and hair and it was the clearest water I have ever seen, it was incredible. Although it was lovely water it was bloody cold so after a short dip we made our way to lunch in the giant bus. Now, we have obviously been on our fair share of trips since we have been away and usually lunch is pretty awful, but, it was actually really nice! So having eaten enough for 4 people at the buffet lunch (saves cooking later!) we made our way along the incredible Maheno beach. The beach is 70km of golden sand and is both a highway and a landing strip - to see people just driving along in jeeps was very surreal and then when a plane took off in front of us I was convinced we were on a film set! As we were driving along we got to see a few of frasers inhabitants - dingoes (mate) and a few dolphins too. We had a quick look at the Maheno shipwreck and then went for a last paddle in one of the 120 crystal clear creeks! Throughout the day Shane regaled us with horror stories of people getting bitten by funnel webs, brown snakes and a few have died where they have simply got lost so although I was pretty gutted we had decided not to stay over there was a part of me that was very relieved! At first I thought Fraser island was the place that had the greatest job in the world competition but obviously I was having a bit of a dumb moment and it was actually Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, but, the tour guides who work over there and get to razz around in massive 4wd things in 200km of sand tracks really do have the greatest job in the world. I probably sound like I am gushing a bit about fraser island but we have been away for almost 8 moths now and apart from two other places I haven’t been that blown away by anywhere - absolutely wicked place! We got back from fraser at about 7 and too knackered to make dinner we settled on a bag of microwave popcorn and another bond film; We decided that we should use our DVD viewing for some sort of film education type program so as I have always hated bond we decided to try and watch every bond, the most recent two are not that bad but diamonds are forever, what the hell is that all about ???????
Next morning we had a slightly later pick up time of 7.00 so again we breakfasted ( how I wish I hadn’t later on) and made our way to get on another boat (number 156 of our trip - we have been counting, how sad!).As soon as we got on the boat the woman told us if we ‘didn’t travel well’ to stay on the back of the boat and stay outside - joy! Unfortunately as I had managed to forget Tel’s shades he went off to buy a dreadful new pair and I could only get a seat on the front of the boat, I knew that didn’t bode well! I was ok for the first half hour but then when everyone started puking around me I didn’t feel so great. Anyway to cut a long story short (thank god I hear you say!) I ended up sat on the sickbay bit of the boat ralphing for most of the morning but I saw so many whales and when the woman put a microphone in the water to hear them singing, (this sounds very pathetic I know) but it really bought tears to my eyes, it was a very lovely experience. At one point most people were over the other side of the boat and I was sat on said sick bench when I decided I should try and actually stand up (It was sooooo choppy!!) a mother and baby appeared right in front of me, I felt very very special indeed! I think in total we saw about 30 whales, they come to hervey bay during their annual migration, the scientists reckon they stop to fatten up their calves and generally have a holiday before carrying on to Antarctica, the water is only cold enough for them for a few months and apparently during that time hervey bay sees about 300 whales. Although I had been green most of the time and couldn’t wait to get back on dry land, I’m so glad we went to see them, it was well worth losing my breakfast for!!!!

FYI:Tel has a ridiculous constitution and proceeded to eat about three packets of biscuits and two carrot cakes while everyone else was just chucking up around him!!!

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