Brisbane, Fraser Island and Sydney return

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I know this has been a long time coming, I'm writing most of this from Victoria Falls in Zambia but I'll start where I left off in Surfers Paradise. We spent 2 more days there which consisted of hiring surf boards and getting progressively better but still in general pretty terrible compared to the amazing guys you see going out there! On our second last night we went to the bar downstairs to make the most of our buy 1 get one free voucher and ended up meeting some cool French Canadian guys which was pretty interesting having only met the English Canadian's before! We went to some bar in town afterwards and had a laugh meeting some of the locals. The next day Katie went shopping and Rob went for an internet session so I decided just to go for a walk along the beach which turned out to be pretty cool and led to me discovering an awesome sport I never knew existed. Basically people on surf boards attached to huge kites which let them hit waves and fly 20ft in the air. Watched them all for a while before heading back and chilling out before getting ready for the big crawl we'd booked ourselves on that night which started at the hilariously early time of 5pm. Met some rowdy Aussies on their cricket teams weekend away and headed down to the first bar which was a classy place on the water. The next 9 or so hours consisted of many free drinks thanks to this guy who'd photocopied the vouchers expertly, crazy bar games organised by the crawl and generally having complete jokes. Me and Rob ended the night crashed out on the beach gathering an entourage of Aussie's around us who loved our accent. Sat there till the early hours, really good fun and a good way to end a really good time in Surfer's Paradise!

Woke up at 8.30 after no more than 4 hours sleep feeling a little shaky and went to the balcony to see the bagpipes from some union parade which had woken me but not the others! We checked out and caught the bus to Brisbane. Katie went to sleep but me and Rob had a hilarious chat for a good 2-3 hours or however long the journey was! We arrived at the large Brisbane transit center and instantly got the KFC grease we'd been craving. The hostel accross the road looked nice but didn't have any room so some nice locals directed us to a bunch in a row. We ended up staying at Chill Backpackers which was really nice and new, perhaps the best hostel after Wake Up in Sydney. We got given leaflets about a free BBQ that afternoon at a church around the corner which as poor broke backpackers we decided we had to attend. There's never just a free meal and 2 guys tried to start a very deep religious chat with us while we ate. Katie left with a Bible. I fancied a walk along the park called South Bank accross the river so got Katie to lend me her iPod and went off on my own along the river bank. I came accross the 'Buddha Birth Festival' organised by a local pagoda which seemed a little out of place and quite funny how touristy it was having seen the 'real deal' in Asia. $10 to be blessed by the Buddha, no thanks! It was a really nice area and walked past plenty of cyclists and bladers plus a fake beach built just in from the river complete with sparkling blue fake sea. So many people were out and about and this was winter. The outdoor lifestyle seems really cool and something we obviously dont have! People were out with their families and mates having a few beers and using the communal public BBQ grills. Really cool. Brisbane apparently gets 300 days of sunshine a year and warmer summers than the Bahamas. It has a feel completely different to that of Melbourne and Sydney. Its a big city with a friendly smaller town feel which I really liked. Walked a long way along the river with the tunes in before heading back and crashing out in the TV for a power nap before getting woken by Rob. Watched Borat and cracked up before going online and watching Victoria Falls bungee jumps on YouTube. A little nervous about this one! We crashed out pretty early anticipating our planned visit to the XXXX Castlemaine Brewery; just down the road the next day.

First thing I did the next morning was to try and ring the Brewery but I couldn't get through. Me and Rob walked down and it was closed. Bank Holiday. Great! Seeing as we were leaving on the bus at 2pm tommorow all was not lost as the first tour is at 11am. We vowed to get up early and ring them when they opened, all was not lost. We had to do this tour. Me and Rob headed to a backpackers just up the road from ours advertising full english breakfast which we decided we needed. It was finally a good Full English. Rob went off to find a camera shop to look at his camera as it had got sandy the night we went to the beach in Surfers as sand had got stuck in the lense. Katie was already in town shopping or something so I decided to do a little walking tour and take in the sights. There wasn't loads to see but I definitely like Brisbane a lot, its got a really good feel to it. Met Katie and Rob on the main shopping street. Katie went off to the cinema whilst me and Rob took in the beautiful botanic gardens on the riverbank before heading over to the fake beach on south bank for a bit of a swim. The day was nice and hot as usual but the "sea" was colder than the real sea. We still went for a swim before drying off in the sun, cant believe this is winter. We headed back to the hostel and played some pool on the roof while the sunset. Its now 42-35 to me. We all had spaghetti on toast for dinner which was pretty rough but lined our stomachs before the planned night out. Headed to the bar at the first backpackers we tried as it looked really lively and ended up bumping into the staff from the hostel in Byron Bay all on a night out since they had some time off. We all got the Tooheys Extra Dry in (probably the best beer in Australia) before heading to another backpackers called Palace, the same company as the one we were headed to in Hervey Bay. Had a really good night and a hilarious walk back! Brewery Tour early tommorow was still going to happen however painful it might turn out to be.

Got up pretty early and rang the brewery who luckily had space on the 11am tour. We headed down feeling a little shaky. Katie had forgotten ID so it ended up just being me and Rob. A cool aussie bloke showed us around, we learnt about the history of the company and how beer is made before seeing the assembly room which was awesome. Me and Rob were in heaven, we had never seen so much beer in our life. Literally a river of cans, 'stubbies' and crates zooming around beneath us. Fantastic. The tour ended in the bar where we redeemed our free samples and tried the original recipe ale which was really nice, a stout and the classic XXXX Gold before walking quickly back to grab katie and our bags and make the 2pm bus to Hervey Bay. The bus ride took till around 8.30pm but it wasn't too bad and we were there soon enough. The scenery along the way was amazing. Rural queensland was stunning. We arrived in hervey bay and did some desperately needed laundry before caving and ordering a dominoes pizza which was delivered right to our dorm room. That's service for you! Got an early one ahead of the 6am wake up time for the briefing before we went to the island!

6am was horrific but after a snickers and coffee I was waking up. There were 20 equally knackered looking people in the room and an enthusiastic aussie bloke put on a government video explaining about the rules you had to follow on Fraser Island - a national park and worlds biggest sand island. Another video about driving advice followed. All the "roads" are just sand tracks and the main highway is the beach running the entire 70 mile east coast. The island is almost completely undeveloped and you literally just set up camp on the beach every night. Out of 20 there were 4 drivers over the age of 21 so we were split into 2 groups with 2 drivers for each. I was completely gutted you had to be 21. Our group was made of mainly English people, 4 from Leeds, 1 from Guildford, a canadian and a dutch girl. We all loaded into our Toyota Landcruiser and headed to the camp shed to load all the gear into the truck. After that we were on our own and headed to Woolworths for our food shop which we did pretty well as a group ending up paying only about 7 quid each for 2 and a half days food. One of our 2 cool boxes was filled entirely with the bare essentials - Tooheys and VB. We caught the ferry over to the island and set off through the crazy sand tracks for about half an hour - 45 minutes towards the eastern beach - main highway for all the vehicles on the island. It was a stunning 70 mile (or something) long stretch of unbroken, undeveloped golden sand and we cruised along at 80km/h passing the occasional other 4x4. This was definitely the way to travel! The sea looked so nice and inviting but swimming is forbidden as its a shark breeding ground and the currents are lethal! We drove for maybe half an hour with tunes up and reached the wreck of the Maheno ship which got blown ashore in 1938. It was really cool and totally eerie, rusted and sunken in the beach. We spent a good 20 minutes looking around and taking snaps. Luckily no other groups were here so we had it to ourselves until the 'others' from our hostel showed up. Basically we became unneccesarily competitive with them and named them the germans regardless of the fact that they were swiss. Anyway we drove on up the beach to Indian Head and climbed up to the top for stunning views down the beach into the distance and of the sand dunes inland on the island. We took some risky cliff top pictures before trying to head on a bit further north on a tricky road but the girls (not katie) got scared that we would get stuck so we headed back much to the annoyment of us lot. Found a really nice camping spot on the beach just north of Eli Creek where we'd go for a swim in the morning. The night consisted of digging lazy boy chairs in the beach with Katie, Rob and our new recruit Edd and chilled with beers, ultimately relaxed while the sun came down. We felt like we were in an STA Travel advert however cheesy that sounds! The girls were hungry before us so cooked all the food, perfect. We enjoyed our BBQ before going back to the lazy boys for a bit. We got cold so me, rob, katie and edd went on a firewood search and came across a cheeky coconut with a funny haircut that we named wilson. Basically we cracked him open, found him to be rotten, violated him before giving him a beer and ciggarette and cremating him whilst singing a song we wrote in his honor. After wilson had passed we went up onto a sand dune just off the beach and noticed one particularly bright star - we knew at once it was him and spent the night sitting under the stars getting deep. It was the most stars I'd ever seen in my life, even more than the desert in India. You could see space dust that looked like the edge of a galaxy, it totally blew us away! Edd and Rob fell asleep so me and Katie dragged them back and we all went to bed.

The next day I was up early and had the liberating experience of digging my own toilet. After a thorough hand wash and a quick breakfast we packed the van up and headed the short way down the beach to eli creek - a fast moving freshwater creek coming from a spring in the middle of the island. We spent the morning chilling (literally) in the beautiful clear waters and drank from them! Me, Rob and Katie walked really far up and lay back to float all the way down to the beach and sea. It was amazing! Next up we drove south to Happy Valley, one of the only little developments on the island to stock up on ice for our (slightly smelly) meat box and obviously to keep the beers cooled. Afterwards we found a perfect camping spot and left the van there and set out on an epic walk through rainforest and over baking sand dunes to reach lake wabby. Tooheys kept us going through the hour or so and when we finally looked over the edge of a dune and saw the sparking green waters of Lake Wabby we knew it had been worth it. It was absolutely stunning, like a desert oasis. We spent the whole afternoon lounging in the waters and swimming to the other side where there was a tiny little beach. It had to be one of favourite places in the whole time so far. The walk back wasn't so bad and we had a BBQ again for dinner. Katie was feeling ill and went to bed early with some of the others whilst me, Rob, Edd and the Leeds girls stayed up playing hilarious drinking games on the sand. We wandered down the beach for a bit afterwards and came accross 'the germans' - it turned out they were lads and me and rob chilled with them and some curious dingoes for a bit before crashing out.

On our final morning we were rudely woken by some of the arsey girls in our group fretting about how the tide might come in and we might get stuck on the beach if me, rob and edd didnt get up right now. We ignored them and they collapsed the tent on us which was actually really nice as the window fell on us and we got the breeze. Just like we said we were up and away by 8 and headed off the beach for the last time into the islands center to wash some dishes at a place called central station. From here we drove to the idyllic Lake Mackenzie. Probably the most popular spot on the island. A sparking blue/turquoise freshwater lake surrounded by dense forest. We spent the afternoon chilling here and going for a swim. We kind of preffered Lake Wabby though purely because of the challenge of getting there and the lack of other tourists. From Mackenzie we drove back to the ferry pier to catch the boat back to Hervey Bay. Fraser Island had been completely awesome, such an amazing place. Although a few people in our group were annoying as hell we had a total laugh with the others, especially edd - total lad. RIP WILSON.
Back at hervey bay and after a near death experience drive back to the camp shed thanks to one of our drivers, we pigged out on dominoes pizza before getting a relatively early night. We were all completely knackered from the last 3 days!

We were up refreshed around 10am to check out and eat leftover dominoes for breakfast. The Leeds group were staying another night and were in the same unit as ours so we hung around until 12.30 and went online before saying our goodbyes and catching a taxi to tiny little Hervey Bay Airport for our flight back to Sydney. The weather had been perfect since leaving, we wondered how it would be on our return! The airport was so quick and easy and we had cable TV for the 2 hour flight - Virgin Blue definitely reccomended. It was strange to fly straight over fraser island and then surfers paradise later on, especially as it had taken weeks to get this far north and only 2 hours to get back! We landed in sydney and got a fantastic view of the harbour. It was getting dark once we'd got off the train from the airport to central station. It was really strange to be walking these streets again and to be arriving in a place where we knew exactly where to go! Going back to wake up hostel was really funny and some of the staff recognised us which was cool. Appropriately we were on the Africa floor. Rob went out in search of some shoes as he lost his and I went online for a bit. We went to get food at a place on Oxford Street called 'The Gaff' where you get a free meal when you buy a beer. We werent full so stuffed our faces with 2 meals each. Excellent. The night was obviously spent back at our favourite hostel bar - Side Bar. Had a really funny night and rang loads of mates as we were using up our credit before leaving Australia. It was awesome to speak to them on the phone for the first time since leaving. The night ended with me and katie taking lift lottery to a whole new level and furnishing the entire lift. Great end to Australia.

The 11th of May was the day of our flight to Johannesburg and the time for our trip to get, in my eyes, back to real travelling again! Katie had managed to get tonsilitus so we walked to Sydney hospital while Rob headed out in search of a good deal on a new camera (his had broken in surfers). The hospital was really peaceful with no crazy waiting room and we got seen pretty quick. Surprisingly they put katie in a gown and lay her on a bed before giving her antibiotics on a drip. I reminded her of lift lottery to keep her mind off the thing stuck in her vein!! She got prescribed a course of antibiotics and they gave her a number to ring in Jo'burg incase of complications. So nice. We were expecting a big bill but when the doctor saw us hanging around looking fishy he laughed and told us there was no charge! Awesome! We spent the rest of the day wandering around all the places we'd liked so much last time and stocking up on things we'd need for africa. Met rob back at wake up with a brand spanking new SLR - he was very happy with his new toy! Caught the train back to the airport to begin our epic 29 hour journey to Jo'burg.....

Africa update to come, but everything is going awesome, have bungee jumped at victoria falls and been to Zimbabwe for the day which was really interesting. I'm writing from Vic Falls on the Zambia side, we're finally on the move again tommorow - heading north to Malawi. After that we have Tanzania, Kenya (where we say goodbye to Katie on the 13th of June) and then travel over to Uganda, hopefully with these legend swedish guys we're travelling with! Speak to you all soon, send me some emails or something 😊

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