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Published: April 7th 2016
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So I arrived into Hervey bay, from another overnight bus, still tired I got picked up by the hostel bus and checked into a room. The weather was feeling a bit colder and with being camped out for the next few days I decided to get a jumper. A couple of us went to Kmart. I got a fleece and a ghostbusters jumper. We then went back to the hostel and packed for the next few days camping (we were only allowed a small bag, no big bags) once packed, we went to the meeting. We were encouraged to get into groups of 8 and buy food together, these would be our travelling companions. Once we had sorted out our group we headed to Aldi to get some food sorted, we had a basic menu sorted and bought all the important parts of the menu. Once back at the hostel we made our first lunch and organised the food into breakfast, lunch and dinner groups.
The following morning we were up early for the Dingo briefing and driving on sand safety instructions. Then we handed over our drivers licences and filled in paperwork. (each and every time you do something
that is incredibly fun, or remotely dangerous you have to sign away all your rights. If you die it's all your fault! lots of paperwork to this effect has been signed by me...) We then filled the cool boxes with our food and packed ourselves into the cars and headed for the ferry to Fraser Island.
Once on the island, we drivers had a briefing, outlining the dangers of driving 4x4 and getting it wrong (yup, you guessed it, if we went wrong we would die horribly!!). We had a talk on sharing the driving and then set off into the island.
I can't remember the order we did things, but on the first day I didn't drive, in fact the first day was terrifying me with the prospect of driving. Within 5 minutes of being on the beach (which is the main highway), we slowed to spot a Dingo walking around on the beach, just as it trotted off we spotted some whales playing in the sea next to us, we could see at least one juvenile and 2 adults, all jumping out of the sea. We just drove over huge rocks, along the beach and through
river beds. We walked up a huge sand dune to a lake, that was at the bottom of the dune. It was cold and sunny, but incredibly beautiful, with white sands and green foliage and blue waters. We headed to our campsite while it was still light. We had a gas BBQ to cook on and had tents that slept 4, a porta loo for number 2's and the beach for number 1's. Yes we were camping just off the beach, no there was no Dingo net, Yes we had to go to the loo in a minimum of 2, with at least one dingo stick. A dingo stick is a length of wood, usually a branch, at about 1m, this is used to whack a dingo on the nose if it gets too close. We couldn't go alone as when we crouched down we became an easy target to a dingo.
So after dinner and preparing lunch for the next day, a group of us girls headed to the right hand side of the beach for a wee. Whilst one peed the rest stood guard sweeping the torches around to see if anything was watching us. As I
was looking out into the darkness I saw 2 eyes looking back from the left side (which was the boys side) but these eyes were reflective and low down. A dingo was watching us. We headed back into camp and were drinking and having a laugh (having warned everyone that the dingo was near by). Then we had to store all food and drink in the cars and ensure that the rubbish was locked away. We could only have clothes and sleeping stuff in the tents as anything else would encourage the dingos into them. Still needing some sleep I went to bed early, while others in the group stayed up drinking.
The next morning we got out the breakfast stuff and were happily eating, when I was told that all the other drivers in my group were hungover and none of them sober enough to drive. (This is an issue as there are police on the island and you do get breathalyzed, as well as the fact that it is all 4x4 wheel driving and you need to be on point.) So I was driving for the morning, no excuses. It was fantastic, I have never enjoyed driving
so much as when I was driving at 80km per hour down a beach (this is the highway on fraser!!). I would shout out "bumpy" or "splashy" to warn those in the back of hazards ahead. We had already discovered that the back was slightly more violent than the front (but a lot more fun) you got thrown around and risked hitting the roof of the car. Generally these were not big hazards, then we approached one, which was a lot bigger, having been following the cars in front I hadn't seen how big it was, breaking in sand is not something you can do dramatically, so I slowed gently as much as I could and shouted "big Splashy and Bumpy", there was a slight acknowledgement from the back. We took the river bed at approximately 55km per hour, it definitely woke everyone up. I drove for roughly half the day, before anyone felt that they had sobered up enough to drive. We went to a lazy warm river and flowed down the river, stopped at a shipwreck on the island and headed to Indian head. A rocky montain on the island, we climbed up and had a good look out from up there. At the top, the sand was black, and in the sea below you could make out some sharks swimming about. As we climbed down, I slipped and cut my hand open. (The scar has faded 😞 here I was trying to get permanent marks from my adventures). We then continued to the Champagne pools, which unfortunately we didn't see with all the microbubbles, but we did have a good swim. Then we had to head back to camp, we couldn't drive out in the dark as there would be dingos and it would become more dangerous, as we need to see waves as they come in.
We got back to camp before dark and cooked up are last night's meal, chilled and ate before heading to bed.
The last day we headed inland again and drove along single track roads. We went to a lake where the sand is so pure "you can wash your hair with it", so we all washed our hair and had a good time playing in the water. As we dried off I started plaiting all the girls hair. We headed off to the resort, where we would get the ferry from, but arrived early so we sat on the pier and ate lunch and continued to plait hair. The once the ferry arrived we got back into the cars and I drove onto the ferry.
After the ferry journey, I drove the car off the ferry and onto the main land. We got back to the hostel and checked into our rooms, retrieved our big bags from storage and repacked. We all had a domino's pizza each (the $5.00 variety) and then had some drinks together. At this point I had to leave to get a night bus to Byron Bay, having had so much trouble sleeping I thought I would give being drunk ago.
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