Sea, Sand & Spaceships: Mission Beach to Fraser Island

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It wasn’t a large rat, it was a bandicoot. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you obviously haven’t read the last blog. Shame on you! I like to think of our blog entries as individual episodes part of a larger series. A bit like Neighbours, only without the poor acting and Karl Kennedy (and, sadly, with the dubious script writing). Those that tune in regularly are rewarded with a greater understanding of the bigger picture. And while you are fully aware that the show is of questionable quality, you watch it anyway. Partly due to habit, partly due to having nothing better to do, partly due to Karl Kennedy.

Anyway, just in case anyone is reading this not because it nicely fills in the gap between work and dinner but because they’re genuinely interested in what we’re up to I’ll get on with it.

Before leaving Mission Beach, on the East Coast of Australia, we parked up the campervan and went for a morning hike to a viewpoint. My problem with viewpoints is that they invariably involve going up hill, not exactly what you need after a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes, but this one was worth it and gave a great panorama of the bay below. Dave and I weren’t the only ones who thought it was a good spot. The narrow walkway was lined with the biggest spiders I’ve even seen, loads of those small lizards that I’ve forgotten the name of (skinks) and a huge goanna. It was terrifying at the time (lost count of the number of spiderwebs I walked into before I made Dave walk infront) but seems a bit pathetic now… They were BIG spiders though!

We considered taking four days to reach the next town only 100km South to coincide with an Italian food festival:

‘You could direct us there, Helen’
‘Or you could drive us there, Dave’

But instead headed for a place called Townsville via Wallaman Falls, the largest single drop waterfall of any in Australia. It was a big drop. Several hundred metres I think. Townsville itself hardly warrants a mention (we took only 5 photos while there. And three of them are of a parrot) but it was nice enough. The following day we took a ferry to Magnetic Island where we walked for miles, keeping a lookout for the grey fuzzy bums of resident koala bears above. But did we see any? No… We did have lunch in perhaps the windiest place I’ve ever had lunch though. Which while admittedly isn’t quite the same, it’ll do.

The place we next visited was one where we thought we’d take hundreds of photos - the Whitsunday Islands. If the picture on your desktop shows a beautiful sandy cove set inside a lagoon of impossibly blue waters then it’s probably them. Everyone raves about the ‘Whitsundays’ - they are paradise. Unless of course you’re there when it’s raining. Then it’s crap. The seas are rough and paradise is barely visible and that which is visible is reminiscent of Weston-Super-Mare. Hoping the weather might brighten after a few days we checked into a nice hostel with our very own kitchen and bathroom, which was pleased me inexpressibly.

There are many reasons why the hostel kitchen was better than a camp kitchen. While eating dinner Dave did not have to excuse himself in order to extract a tick from his arm, as he did while at a caravan park. Neither did our eyes remain fixated on a grasshopper the size of my head sitting ready to pounce from a beam above the dinner table. Nor were we required to wash a dinner plate to remove traces of lizard landed on it from above.

There are reasons too why a real bed is better than sleeping in a van. Aside from the obvious (that it’s actually comfortable) you don’t get woken up by suffocating heat at 7am. Nor are you stirred by oddballs dismantling tents at 5am or children screaming before dawn. Most importantly, great chasms do not form and develop within the mattress. Do not take for granted your mattress consisting of only one part. Ours in the spaceship is split into three and it seems they do not all get on. Every night, without fail, the three parts argue and each pull away from the other as if magnetically repelled. Every morning I wake up thinking I must’ve fallen asleep on a speed bump. It does not make for a good nights rest.

And having an en-suite? Wow. Don’t even get me started. Without delving into unnecessary detail, making a trip to the loo in the night is not a manoeuvre to be taken lightly. First there is the shuffle from the sleeping position to the side door. Trouble is that the plank of wood supporting the mattress under our feet doesn’t secure properly and when you sit on it, you are flung to the floor as Dave’s feet are flung to the ceiling. Unable to sit then, you hover, stooped ungainly and uncomfortably. Then there is the fumbling hunt for the flip flops that aren’t where you left them, not to mention the slip of paper with the access code to prevent God-knows-who from having an illicit wee in the park’s facilities.

To sum up, staying in the hostel was amazing. The weather didn’t get any better though so we had to leave without doing a boat trip to the islands. We journeyed inland and pushed on through steep, winding roads to get to Eungella National Park. On the way there we realised that the car was really very low on petrol. The last quarter of a tank practically vanished. It was only when we reached the top of the steep, winding roads that we were told the only petrol station was the one we passed 30km ago. So we turned around, changed drivers, and drove back to the petrol station. On the way back down it seemed the van found a lot of petrol - almost half a tank. It was when we pulled into the petrol station that we realised that the steep roads were dictating the fuel level, we actually had plenty and had just made that journey for nothing…

It wasn’t to be the last time we’d flirt with fuel failure. After spending a day in the National Park spotting platypus and sawshell turtles we set out from Mackay to a town called Rockhampton. It’s a stretch of about 300km and there is nothing between them. We must have been about 50km away from civilisation when the light came on to warn us we were running low on fuel. Not that I needed informing - I’d been studying the gauge more than the road. I don’t think there could have been much left in the tank as we limped to the first petrol station there was. Boards propped along the road and tacked to trees counting down the kilometres until we reached it made for quite an exciting finish. Indeed Dave actually admitted to wishing it were a closer call… Even though the gauge was actually showing empty!

Once filled up with so much fuel Agrabah was practically brimming, we spent a night in ‘Yeppoon’ (where do they get these names?) and then onto the even more oddly named ‘Town of 1770’. That’s actually what it’s called. It’s so named because Captain Cook first set foot there in 1770. But still. Don’t call it ‘Town of 1770’. Anyhow, from there we took a snorkelling tour to the Southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The boat ride to the island was a little choppy (I fell over) but the lagoon where we snorkelled was completely sheltered and calm. We spent a good couple of hours in the water and even got to swim with turtles! We saw 5 in total. All of them huge and gentle, like Crush in ‘Finding Nemo’. Dave has always wanted to see turtles. He was smiling so much when we were swimming with them that he had to keep surfacing to let water out of his mask.

Our next stop was Hervey Bey where it was still raining so we again tried to wait it out. This time in a caravan park, not a hostel.. Thankfully it had a proper kitchen with a huge plasma screen TV so we passed the time watching old reruns of Parkinson, the old channel 4 show Teachers and meeting a number of ‘grey nomads’ - retired travellers wandering the length and breath of the country - while they cooked their meat on the barbie.

Hervey (which is for some reason pronounced ‘Harvey’) Bay doesn’t really have too much to offer in itself. But only a 30 minute ferry ride away is Fraser Island - the largest sand island in the world. Once the weather had sorted itself out we took a day tour. The entire island is made of sand so the only vehicles granted access are 4x4s. The weird thing is that there are official highways. And they’re made of sand. The beach, for example, is a highway. It has a speed limit (60 km/h or about 35 mph) and applicable and enforceable road laws. How good is that? The day we visited followed one of heavy rain and many of the trucks that were pulling boats got stuck. At one point we had to reverse nearly a full kilometre in order to take a different route. There are some beautiful lakes and creeks and Dave spotted a dingo too.

It was a bit rubbish being on a tour though. There’s no better way to ruin a picturesque lake than by being surrounded by 50 other tourists angling for exactly the same photo. The campervan may get on our nerves (and it does, believe me) but it means we’re completely independent and can go wherever we like. And that, is just the way I like it : )

More soon, xxx

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Comments

[Cat]

May birthdays
Thank you for the fabulous birthday pressie of a shiny new blog entry! I'm living vicariously through your fabulous photos and stories, counting down the months til the end of my contract when I can jet off too... please don't stop. Keep having a *really* wonderful time in Oz, and don't let our jealousy stop you from being as descriptive as you like. Dave, happy happy birthday for 2 days time!!! Hope you guys are loving every minute (when not cursing the camper van or ticks) Cx