Fraser Island

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Left Brisbane after sorting out everything for the rest of the trip and running around and around the city trying to track down a copy of the police report. Getting pretty sick of having to do boring stuff like go the police and argue with the car hire company. Had a really good night out in Bris and we're enjoying being in the more sociable hostels rather than in the cold campsites with old people. Glad to leave the city (when we eventually managed to get out the one way system!) and be driving on the dead straight roads that we're used to.

Drove to Noosa via the Glass House Mountains which were pretty stunning. Noosa has made it onto my list of places I like in Australia behind Sydney and Brisbane. It's an upmarket beach town like Byron minus the hippies and with nicer shops (if I had the money) and a really nice national park over the headland. Saw my first koloa in the wild! The hostel in Noosa was pretty interesting, had the thinest walls ever and was the party hostel with a popular bar down stairs so sleep didn't really happen even if you wanted to. We took a day trip to Australia zoo from Noosa, it's Steve Irwins zoo and I have to admit to being quite impressed by it. Firstly I learnt a few weeks ago that you do not make fun of Steve Irwin in front of an Australian, they either love him or hate him over here and I think I really offended a fan of his. So the zoos doing all sorts of wonderful world saving stuff which was interesting but the best bit was the areas with kangaroos and koloas just running around so you could feed and stroke them! Took lots of photos so I can get back and pretend I was stroking a wild kangaroo. Then obviously there was the crocodile show where some Steve Irwin inspired nutter dances around inside a crocodiles mouth, although it was done to educate Australians about how to live with crocodiles which is important. You would've thought after being here for so many generations they would've learnt to avoid them but apparently not.

Being in the hostels we're mainly meeting other backpackers now and I've never heard so many Irish accents in my life. You can garentee there will be a few wherever you stop. Also loads of English, American and Canadians. Swapping lots of travel stories and many have come from SE Asia so it's been nice to talk about there. Quite happy to have a break from Australians for the moment, they are lovely chatty people, but they're a bit useless when it comes to things like police reports and mending cars and don't take being told what to do well! Plus after being robbed by one I feel I can justifyably comment on there history... insert your own convict joke here... However they are really laid back and you feel a lot more welcome here than I think you would if you were traveling around the UK. Keep laughing at some of there words though, they call pool 'sticks', cheap boxed white wine 'goon' (what backpackers drink instead of water) and slot machines 'pokies'. There's loads more equally as funny but I can't think of them right now!

From Noosa we drove to Rainbow beach, we've left the more developed part of the coast behind for a while, drove for ages not passing any houses and few other cars. Rainbow beach is a lovely little town but just used as the jumping off point to get to Fraser Island. When we were driving there we found the passenger door on our new car needed reparing and took it to a garage, I won't bore you with the details but we had to get it to the next town before we left for Fraser so it could be repaired. The only way to get back was to hitchhike along those roads I've just described, luckily we accosted random people at the hostel who had cars, but I think that shows how crap Australia is, no where else on the trip have I had to consider hitchhiking to get anywhere and obviously this is a more developed country than most I've been to. We got back this morning to the car by taking the school bus!

So had a night on Fraser Island, basically a big sand island with lots of dingos and a rainforest and lots of lakes! We were in a 4x4 coach and the main beach down the east of the island is used like a highway for island. There aren't any roads and you constantly see backpackers who've hired 4x4s getting stuck in the sand! It really was beautiful, the rainforest combined with the freshwater lakes and sand dunes was stunning. Unfortunately it was a bit rainy but it was still stunning. Me and Siov decided to get a flight over the island as you can't see most of it otherwise (and it was really cheap!) and taking off and landing on the beach was an experience. I can't really get across how nice it was without photos and if I start going on and on about lakes and rainforests you'll probably get quite bored, so you'll have to believe me! The best part was that all the meals were a all you can eat buffet, not eating the usual backpacker diet and having salad and a roast was almost overwhelming and I've never eating so much in my life. Natuarally we stole about 20 little pots of jam and honey and made sandwiches for when we returned to Rainbow!

Got lots of big drives now for the rest of the trip, not as many stops as south of Brisbane but they should all be really beautiful and the rest of the trips going to be busy! Not enjoying the long drives to much, gets very boring driving through trees on a straight road for hours. Although it is interesting how diverse the landscape here is and how quickly it changes, we went today from a sand area with a very dry forest, though pine forests, then into lush farm land (the Bunderberg area, where they make the famous rum over here, garenteed hangover!) then back into dryer forests all in four hours. Trying to split the driving so stopped for a few nights here in the town of 1770, something to do with captain cook and discovering Australia. Again small, pretty, not much to do, full of Australians and some backpackers and nice beaches which you shouldn't swim in because of sharks....

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