Hervey Bay

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28/2

We woke up just before 8, so that we could ring the Greyhound office and find out if our bus was running, keeping everything crossed. We were given the good news that it was running- phew! We then had to go to the local post office to try and retrieve a birthday parcel from the Woottons that the lazy postman couldn't be bothered to deliver to our hotel. Unfortunately it couldn't be found at the post office, and I was told it was returned to sender, so we had to leave that, and head back to our hotel to check out and get a taxi to the bus station. Luckily the taxi came quickly, and we headed off to Greyhound, with enough time to use the toilet and get a drink and snack before we got on the bus, and left at 10.15. It was rather a wet journey to Hervey Bay, with a lot of evidence of flooding around. We made a stop at a big service area, and got a sandwich and drink. We made it to Hervey Bay at 5.30 and called a taxi to take us t our hotel- no buses or other transport for us to use. We checked into our hotel, the lovely guy I spoke to on the phone checked us in and gave us some advice about a Fraser Island trip, which we booked for the next day. He also gave us some delivery menus as there was nowhere to eat within walking distance, and we didn't want to get a taxi into the town area. The room was nice, and had a little kitchen area, not that we could go to a shop to buy food to cook! We ordered an Indian takeaway, which was OK, but nowhere near English standard! We paid $5 for 24 hours of wifi, and tried to get an early night as we had to be up very early for our trip tomorrow.

1/3

We had our Fraser Island trip today- the reason for going to Hervey Bay! We got up at 6.30am for our pick up at 6.50 from outside our hotel. We were first on the bus, probably as we were quite far out. The driver and the guide were very friendly. We made quite a few more stops to pick up other people, and then headed to the ferry port. We were all foot passengers, and headed onto the ferry first. We had to wait for all the cars to be loaded and then we set off for Fraser Island- the largest sand island in the world. Only 4x4 vehicles are allowed on the island. There was a friendly cat onboard the ferry, who seemed to live on there- had food and water on there. It took around 30 minutes on the ferry to get to the island, and when we arrived we were split into different groups for our tour. We got on a bus with huge wheels and suspension. Our driver and guide, Mike was friendly, but true to Australian bus driver standards, enjoyed driving very fast and hitting all the bumps. It was good fun with the suspension, we definitely needed our seat-belts! We stopped at central station, where people used to live back in the logging days- what the island was used for. There was one original building left, and we saw some big tram wheels, that would have been used when there was logging here. There were huge March flies that kept landing on everyone- Mike showed us how to kill them- wait for them to land for a couple of seconds and then hit them and they die! We chose to use our deet insect repellent to try and put the flies off- Mike said it wouldn't work on the flies, but they didn't bother us after we out it on, but they still landed on everyone around us! We had a wander into the rainforest, and saw a crystal clear stream running through the bottom- at first glance the water looks green, but then you realise it is perfectly clear and you can see the sand underneath. We got back on the bus, over the bumpy roads, and headed to lake McKenzie, where we stopped for an hour. Some people went for a swim in the lake, but we didn't want to go in and get wet, so we sat on the sand and dipped our feet in. I also used some of the sand to exfoliate my feet and legs- as suggested by Mike. It makes your skin lovely and soft, and the PH level of the water is the same as shampoo, so it makes your skin and hair really soft. After our stop at the lake, we headed off for our lunch stop, at the only resort on the island. It was a buffet lunch, and was quite nice, plus we stole an extra couple of rolls and some fruit to have later on when we got back! We headed onto the beach in the coach and bombed along at about 100kph, bouncing along and overtaking all the 4x4 jeeps! We stopped at a shipwreck, which was an old cruise ship, and had drifted there after it broke away from its tow ship. We saw some coloured sand mountains, called pinnacles, which were huge natural mountains of all different coloured sand. We also saw a dingo on the beach, which we tried to keep our distance from, as they can be very vicious, and live wild on the island. We drove back along the beach and drove over the rocks which was very bumpy. We had another stop at a creek, lovely clear water. Apparently you can float down on a tube from one point to the end, but we didn't have a tube. It sounded like the water here was very cold! We stopped back outside the resort for the bus to be swept out, so got a drink and an ice cream from the shop whilst we waited, and it started to pee it down! We then headed back to the ferry port, where we had to wait quite a long time for the ferry to come in, as the tide was so far out, there was hardly enough water for the the ferry to make it into the port. We eventually all boarded the ferry, and had to wait for the captain to manoeuvre the boat so that we could get out into the water- it took almost an hour to get back to Hervey Bay. We got dropped back at our hotel (last) and had our rolls and fruit for our evening snack! We were absolutely exhausted and couldn't wait to sleep.

2/3

We woke up to more rain today- awful weather. We bought 24 hours of Internet at our hotel and stayed in all day, booking up and sorting out our hotels for New Zealand. We managed to get pretty much everything sorted, except for our camper van hire. After doing all this, we were starving, as it was about 3.30 and we hadn't eaten anything all day. We ordered a Pizza from Pizza Hut, which was quite a mission in itself and had to phone up in the end! We had our pizza and some yummy dessert balls- caramel cookie bites- delicious! I managed to Skype Mum and Dad, and Leo happened to be there as well, so I got to see him, which was lovely. We had used all our wifi MB allowance, so we packed up all our stuff ready to leave in the morning.

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