Onto Fraser Island

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We then travelled to Fraser Island via Harvey Bay where again we got to shop for food but no alco.

I cant remember if it was today, or yesterday but one of our morning stops on our trip we went to Childers. Childers is a small farming town which is full of travellers who are there seasonally on the fruit picking trail around Australia. On June 23, 2000 the The Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel was deliberately put on fire. There was no where to escape the blaze and the fire killed 15 backpackers. Ten of the victims were sleeping in one room and four in another. There was only one exit from these adjoining rooms and it led directly to the narrow stairway where the flames swept up from below. There were no smoke alarms and no sprinklers in the building. The man proven guilty for lighting the fire is said to have had an obsession and grudge against one of the girls who was staying there at the time. He is not in prison for life.

Childers Hostel has now been rebuilt however not used as a hostel. You are able to go upstairs where they have built a memorial which is quite nice and sad. It has pictures of the blaze and shrine to those killed. There's the stories of each of the young travellers and a picture painted of all the dead backpackers together. If you end up in Childers it is worth seeing.

Anyways back to what definitely happened today.

We stopped at Harvey Bay and had a chance to shop. Tonight we were going to have a dress up party so Halloween was chosen as the theme as it was close enough to Halloween and also there were plenty of Americans and Canadians who wanted to celebrate it. SO most of us picked up something to wear at the cheap $2 and junk shops in town.

The ferry ride to Fraser Island was approximately 40 minutes and was a bit choppy but I was fine without medication. We were met on the dock and a bus took us to our accommodation. The rooms were lodges. There was 4 rooms of four people in each lodge with a common lounge, bathroom and kitchen. It was possibly the worst accommodation we stayed in in the sense of tiny rooms, stuffy rooms, bad lighting etc but it wasn't bad/disturbing or anything like that.

Dinner was served at the Dingo Bar. It was burritos or tacos.

After dinner we had our dress up party. I just went at a witch. I bought a witch hat which had black hair attached. Others were mummy, zombie, devil, pope, trailer trash to name a few off the top of my head. Through out the night we ended up doing some costume shopping to. The night involved lots of dancing and drinking.

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