A Dingo Ate My Baby

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After being well fed and rested in Brisbane I caught the nightbus to Hervey Bay. The hostel is nice but very overpriced. I arrived at midnight, and I headed out on a tour at 6 in the morning, so I really didn't get my moneys worth.
The tour of Fraser was the best experience yet in Australia. I was in a Euro trip-type bus (myself, four people from Ireland, one girl from C.R., one from Germany, and two brit girls). The British girls think I'm "so fucking lovely" (quite the mouth on them) and they took videos of me talking randomly at the picnic table because thy like my accent. The way the tour is set up the nine of us have a 4WD van that we rented and a map. We each chipped in $20 for food and we were off to do whatever we wanted to whenever we wanted to. We saw rainbow sand cliffs next to an ocean teaming with sharks (you can't swin in the ocean around the island) as well as huge shipwreaks and white-sand beaches on the lakes. Withing the first hour we saw a dingo wondering around the forest. They're very dangerous and no one is supposed to walk around alone, especially girls (we taste better?). Only myself and one other girl had ever camped before. So once we explained the concept of a tent and a fly we managed to get camp together in the rain, and it only took about 45 minutes!! We decided to barbecue up some chicken and burgers, I was designated the BBQ queen since none of the others had BBQ'd before. Everything was delicious, and apparently the Cookabura thought so too, since one of them landed on the BBQ and stole some of our chicken, and later landed on one of the Irish girls plates while she was eating. The birds are huge, and very determined. It rained most of the night, and there were mosquitos everywhere, so almost everyone went into the tents straight away.
The next day we tried to do it all. We saw Indian head (a lookout of the entire island), Chamaign pools where we got lost for an hour and the pools ended up having jellyfish in them, the huge sand dunes (some of the biggest in the world) that was swallowing the forest, and a few pristine lakes. After getting lost on the road for a while we realised taht the entire island is just one big lump of sand and everything on it is clinging on for dear life. It's hard to walk and about a million degrees, the ocean looks so inviting, but way too dangerous, and the forest has shade...along with dingos and snakes and spiders (the small spiders are the worst). Camping with these guys was great though, the Irish kids are cute and I'm going to stay in their apartment in Sydney in exchange for cooking. For supper the second night we ate everything we bought - which was way too much. We had sausages and spaghetti and rice and more chicken, and corn and cookies and we ate and ate and ate. This was fantastic, I was definitely making up for starving myself in Sydney. We stayed up all night ant went down to the beach to look at the stars which were fantastically bright away from the lights of the coast.
On our last day we visited beaches with sand so white it hurt to open your eyes, even with sunglasses on. I remember seeing an advertisement when I was young - I don't remember what for - that had a dog digging a hole in a pure white sandy beach and thought to myself "one day I'm going to be in a place like that". We walked through the rainforest and saw huge strangler figs and a stream with water so clear it almost disappeared against the sandy bottom. Unfortunately the journey had to end and we headed back to mainland, exchanging emails and addressed all along. Camping made me miss Canada and I can't wait to go camping when I'm home again.

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Photos

indian head
the most easterly point in Australia

desert pavement
even on vacation I can't help being a geology nerd