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Published: December 17th 2009
Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, welcome to this week's double bill blog brought to you by your favourite campers.
Since last time, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of ups and ups as we have had a fantastic past couple of weeks. Thanks for all your messages and emails, it’s great to hear from you when we are out here. Also a quick hello to our newest blog subscriber, Natalie King!!
So when I last wrote the blog we were looking into our Fraser Island trip. There are two places from which you can take a ferry across to Fraser Island, one being Hervey Bay and the other being Rainbow Beach. We could not find a good 4x4 hire deal in Hervey Bay so we thought we would head down to Rainbow Beach, and with a town named that you could not miss that one. We got to Rainbow beach and checked into a campie hotel for Harry to recharge his batteries, the view from our location was directly over the cliff top which was just perfect. Once parked up we straight away grabbed our towels and headed to the beach as the weather was glorious. When I say
we grabbed our towels I actually mean, we grab everything we can carry, as for those who know us know we like to be prepared so we actually take everything “just in case”. We spent most of the day in the water and on the beach “chilling” (see geeky pic of me). In the late afternoon we dragged ourselves off of the beach as we needed to start looking into the Fraser Island adventure.
We came across a little place where we were able to hire a big 4x4 so we phoned our friends Tom and Carole to see if they were up for it, they were, so we booked it. We decided on taking the vehicle for 3 days which allowed us to be able to stay on the island for 2 nights. The hire was really basic so we had to have all our own camping gear, so in true Harry style, he came up with the goods. When we bought him he had loads of things including a tent, solar lights, esky etc and we got given a second tent randomly when we were in Cairns after we had just bought Harry so there was a
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Jumping for joy!spare tent for Tom and Carole. After a free night camp outside a backpacker hostels we were ready to meet up with Tom and Carole to start our adventure. We turned up to the 4x4 hire place and signed our lives away (literally), I actually didn’t want to read what I was signing as when you see clauses like “You will be responsible for the full cost of any repair, up to any amount on the vehicle” and “You are liable for the cost of repair for the breakdown truck if it gets damaged whilst coming out to rescue you”…..so anyway what do you, make a couple of jokes, sign the forms and be totally over friendly to all the staff just in case we have problems later on.
The 4x4 was round the back of the shop so Tom and I drove the campers around and started to load up the van with all the food and camping gear for the next few days. After about 30 minutes we were all set to go. The guy who hired out the vehicle to us “Mick” (not Dundee) was a really strange character (that made me extra worried about signing
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Harry sitting down prior to us going to Fraser Island!! the forms) but seemed to enjoy telling us horror stories about people getting stuck in the sand and vehicles coming back wrecked even though the speed limit has now been reduced to 80kph (that’s Harry’s top speed on the tarmac). He did offer lots of advice about how not to get stuck in the sand and how to get out if we got stuck, he actually went into a lot of detail as apparently the tracks on the island are the worst they have ever been, 14 weeks without rain has made them so soft that most vehicle get stuck at some point. So after the debrief from Mick, Tom and I jumped back in the vans to park them in the corner at the back of the hire shop for 3 days. As I swung Harry around I could tell he was unhappy we were about to leave him and as I was about to put him in the corner of this small patch of grass he decided to sit down. Basically Harry got stuck in the sand, in the car park and didn’t want to budge, slightly embarrassing as I was just telling Mick that we “should be
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Ship wreck on Fraser Island ok in the sand”. I called Mick out of the office to ask him for help, he then called a friend (again also very strange and full of horror stories on the island) who kindly pulled Harry out of the sand in exchange for a few cold beers. After the false start we headed to the ferry and got on.
The ferry only took 10 minutes and we were there, I get the feeling I’m going into far to much detail so I think I should let the pictures do all the talking. Basically we camped on the beach for the first night and on the inland national park on the second night. The 4x4 didn’t get stuck, but we did have some hairy moments. Kate was more worried about if we got stuck in the dark we would be surrounded by snakes, spiders and dingos and she could not get away from them. So we all had our little worries but had a great time too, it was fun riding over the dunes and being thrown around in the car. We saw a green lake and swam in it, a lake filled with baby turtles, Ely Creek which
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Cheeky!!! is clear water you can wade down the creek in which was really cold and refreshing, Lake McKenzie - the best place in the world, joint with Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday’s, we also saw wild dingoes on the beach and loads of other wildlife.
We enjoyed our time on the Island but like all things it had to come to an end so we took a ferry back and returned the 4x4, damage free.
Kate is now taking over…..The following day we took to the road and headed to Noosa. This town was a real surprise, it seemed like Queensland’s version of St Tropez and it was gorgeous. Suddenly we were surrounded by beautiful looking mansions on the river with their own mornings and huge yachts. The town is also on the beach and is packed full of amazing looking restaurants and bars - all filled with well dressed men and women. So we stayed here for a few days, did a bit of a walk through the national park where you can look out over the bay which was beautiful and we saw Koalas living in the trees which was fabulous. Noosa is my favourite place so
far (except Whitehaven Beach and Lake McKenzie).
Next stop we thought was Brisbane but on the way we saw a sign post for Australia Zoo, so Harry leaped with excitement into the left hand lane and took us down Steve Irwin Way and into the Zoo. This was great! For anyone reading who doesn’t agree with Zoos the animals appeared to have much bigger areas to roam than in the UK and definitely Asian zoos and it was immaculately clean. We got to touch koalas and kangaroos, we saw the famous crocodile show where a crock dives out of the water to grab meat - looked pretty scary to do his job! They also released loads of birds and parrots that flew all around the stadium which was fantastic and they showed around loads of snakes including a huge one that a lady was swimming with! They have a huge area dedicated to Steve Irwin tributes, which was really sad, where people have written, memories of him or thanks to him for what he did for conservation ,on his old shirts. Apparently the zoo rescue hundreds of crocs and various other animals every year and they have a hospital
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Baby Turtle on Fraser Island there to care for them until they are ready to be released back into the wild again. I wont go on about all the animals but check out the pics we loved it there.
We arrived in Brisbane that night after the zoo and it’s the 3rd largest city in Australia and so the largest city we have visited so far. I was panicking a little as didn’t know how much Harry would enjoy the constant stop start of the traffic and it is quite hilly so hill starts also but Harry and Matt did a great job! We got a ferry into Brissie (as the locals call it) the following morning and it was stunning looking up at the huge buildings from the Catamaran, and again the river was dressed in huge beautiful homes with boats at the end of their gardens! Brissie was really clean, and had so many shops, bars and restaurants, it had a totally different feel to the rest of what we have seen here so far. To me if felt like we were in New Zealand - we both loved the city. We visited parliament building, saw where all the politicians argue over
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Sand Blow on FI every decision, it was strange to see Queen Victoria on a stain glass window, but then it’s even more strange that they have our Queen on the coins here! We also went to the Town Hall and I climbed to the top to see the view of the city. Matt was feeling a little claustrophobic so didn’t come up as the lift was 70 years old and the bloke had just told stories of how it almost broke down that morning. So big scores for Brissie, I didn’t expect much so it totally blew me away and its somewhere where I would tell people to visit that come here.
Whilst in Brissie we checked out a mechanics as we thought Harry’s fridge had a gas leak. The guy told us we didn’t have a gas leak but while we were there we decided to get a second battery fitted (to fuel the fridge) and get the air con fitted back into the engine as it was currently sitting under the rear seats! The guy told us it would take about 2 hours, so we asked what was local that we could walk to - the answer was absolutely nothing
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one of many 4 legged spiders we have seen. except a greasy spoon café. This was fine, we took ourselves off found the café had a roast beef roll (mine with gravy, Matt’s - plain!) very British! We then sat in a bus stop for a while and then made our way back it had been 1.45hrs so we were hoping it would be ready! Well, we got back to the garage and to our surprise the front seat had been totally taken out and it looked like we were going to be waiting a while longer! We tried to entertain ourselves the best we could, but we ended up not leaving until 10 hours after we originally got there!! Luckily it was a strange place so we found loads to amuse ourselves with see pics!! I don’t think this guy ever throws anything away, so I think most the time we were waiting they were on a treasure hunt for the part they needed - only took them 9 hours to get through the rest of the junk to find it!!
So by 6pm we were on the road and headed for Surfers Paradise! Woo hoo! The sky-line was fantastic all lit up in blues and greens
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Green lake on FI and there was an electric storm going on when we arrived which added to the beauty. We saw a few campers close to the beach and joined them, they too had just arrived so we were all in it together for the free camping and hoping security would not find us in the open car park right on the seafront! Well, you guessed it, we were found. The guy gave us a warning not to try to camp there again otherwise he would then fine us almost $400, so we escaped from the other campers and drove to a local housing area and quietly slipped into the back. At 4am I awoke to Matt jumping up and throwing his shorts on saying “quick it’s the police, they must be here to fine us or move us on!!” I could see a flashing light, but something told me it wasn’t the police, I tried to tell Matt this, but he was really to hold his hands up when he realised he had completely over reacted. It was in fact a Taxi that had just dropped off a couple to a house where we were parked. I had a good laugh at
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Windy day in Torquay that one!!! So back to bed to try and sleep for another couple of hours. Ha ha fun and games hiding in a 2.6m tall campervan in the city!!
We spent a couple of nights in a really good campsite opposite the beach just up from Surfers in a place called Main Beach. We had a beach day and spent time looking around and at night enjoyed the luxury of being in a powered site with all our lights on, fan, charging everything we could possibly squeeze a charger into!! It’s funny as because it is now summer/Christmas holidays the ozzies seem to flock to campsites, some people we met were there for 3 weeks over Christmas, so they make the most of it. It seems the Christmas light competition does not just exist in homes in the UK but its rife in caravan parks here too!! Lights, fake trees, blow up chimneys with fake santa trying to climb out!! I was loving this as it actually feels a little Christmas-like for the first time woo! Thanks Wendy for the Christmas bulbuls they have pride of place hanging on the rear view mirror. We tried to find a Christmas
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"Queen of the road" tape (yes Harry is old school with the tape deck!) haven’t found one yet but we did find a Billy Joel tape!! Age, Sarey and Wendy you can imagine how excited Matt was and it’s bringing back lots of Happy memories of the Singstar comps!!
We are now in Byron Bay (the most Easterly point on the mainland of Australia). The beach is long and golden and the town has a really good vibe to it, its packed with other campervans and it has a laid back feel to it which is great.
We will try to get the next update on before Christmas but if we don’t then hope you all have a super time. We will be thinking of you all, so enjoy being with friends and family and wrapped up in your new Christmas jumpers. Matt and I are looking forward to spending our first Christmas day together, but think it will feel a little strange waking up in a campervan - there is no way Santa will make it through Harry’s roof grill either!
Marry Christmas and Happy New Year
Love your Ozzy Bloggers xxxxxxxx
Animal Corner:
Animals seen this
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I took a quick flight home! week (not in the zoo)
Koalas
Kangaroos
Possum
Dolphins
Spiders (Lots)
Dingos
Iguannas (?)
Bush Turkeys
Jelly Fish
Fish
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The Kings Adventure
Simon & Natalie King
Thanks guys, I appreciate the recognition. Loving your blog. Giving myslef and my husband ideas for when we start our travels in Feb 2010. Keep up the good work!!! Natalie King