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Today was an early start, my alarm went off at 6:15am in order to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately it was cloudy but still a beautiful place nonetheless. After packing up and getting everything together we awaited our ride to the next stop.
For the want of a cooler expression, a bad ass truck pulled up. I thought of how much Dad would love to be here right now. It was an ex military truck which had been refurbished. So we all piled on and set off to Rainbow Beach Town to stop for somme lunch before we caught the ferry off to Fraser Island.
The ferry took us to 75 mile beach, the beach being, you guessed it - 59 miles long. It is called 75 mile beach because of the length of Fraser is 75 miles. Our driver of the bad ass truck, Mike, was an amazing story teller. Fraser island got its name when Captain Fraser and his wife Eliza came over to Australia in 1836. Their boat got stuck on the Great Barrier Reef and as a result began to sink. Captain Fraser, his wife and other Officers of the ship got
onto a small life boat and the bigger lifeboat was filled with the crew and supplies. Their journey to find land ensued - at this time Eliza was 8 months pregnant and three weeks into their journey she gave birth - they sadly lost the child. The crew decided that their best chance of survival was to lose Captain Fraser, Eliza and the Officers so in the middle of the night they cut the rope attaching them together. When Captain Fraser woke up the crew were long gone and he had no other choice than to come ashore, whether it was safe or not. They were captured by aboriginals, one of which asked for Captain Frasers jacket in which he refused and was then speared through his armpit and into his lung. This caused him to have a slow and painful death as Eliza watched on. Eliza was passed from group to group while the other officers had been taken to the mainland with another group. They managed to escape and raise the alarm that Eliza was imprisoned by the Aboriginals. Eliza was taken to Elanda point where tribes gathered together, word got passed around and a search party was launched. An escaped convict called John Graham who had lived with the Aboriginals on his escape was recaptured and used by the search party as a translator. He went alone to find where Eliza was, 'the white woman' was brought to him where he claimed she was his wife. The natives were having non of it and said that he couldn't take her. When night time fell he snuck out with Eliza and called for the search party. Unfortunately they made a noise and the natives threw spears at them, but they got away. Eliza then went to Sydney and from there she caught a ship back to England - not many people survived the journey so to survive it twice it was miraculous. When she made it back to England she set up a store and told her story for a few pounds each time. A few years later she died by being hit by a horse and carriage. So anyway, they decided to name the Island after Captain Fraser and his wife. The Aboriginals disagree with this story and say they looked after the Frasers when they came onto the Island. They are currently pushing for the original name of the Island to be reinstated - K'gari.
So back to driving along the beach highway, we suddenly did a U- turn, Mike jumped out and the next second he was introducing us to a sea tiger snake, a snake 10x more venomous than a cobra.
Next stop was Pie Valley where we walked through the rainforest which had some trees that were 900+ years. The Satinay Tree was one of these old trees - known on the island for their waterproof aspect they have been used to line canal banks. We also passed a creek which was eerily silent and apparently aboriginal women used to give birth in the creek and it was a sacred place in which men weren't allowed.
Back on the bus we headed towards Lake McKenzie. The water here has such a high acid content that there are only 4 little animals - turtles, acid frog and two little fish. We stopped here for lunch first and then made our way down to the lake. No food was allowed down by the lake just incase the dingos made off with our backpacks - reassuring. The water was incredible, clear and made hair feel conditioned, you could use the sand to polish jewellery and exfoliate. The downside was that it was such fine sand it got everywhere - still found it a couple days later.
From there we went to Eli Creek, Britney and I went into the Creek and 'crawled' down the river, it was very refreshing even though it was cold and there was more of that ridiculously fine sand which again got everywhere.
Happy Valley was where we stayed, the night was full of various card games where my competitive streak came out and I was labelled the 'passive aggressive card player' but we still had fun! We took a walk down to the beach to look at the stars, making sure we stayed together to ensure no on was attacked by a dingo. The sky was so clear it was beautiful, after that it was off to bed.
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