Australia Part 13 - Fraser Island

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Rain, rain oh and some more rain!!!

With our “time out” in Brisbane over we headed on another train journey (which means more cream tea!) and then got a connecting bus to get to Hervy Bay, the nearest town that travellers stay at to get to Fraser Island. This was fairly obvious in the layout and excitement level of the town, that being pretty dull and just full of hostels and restaurants. The bus dropped us off quite late at this closed retail park basically, so we sat around and waited at a vague bus stop in the hope we were going to be picked up by the hostel bus at some point. Luckily for us there was good old MacDonald’s near by with free wifi whoopee, so we headed there for our dinner (we really should try somewhere else, maybe kfc or pizza hut for a change), and spent most of our time trying to get on to the free wifi and failing miserably. Not one MacDonald’s in oz has been able to provide decent wifi like they all say they do. Never mind we’d managed to waste a good hour sat there so now only had till …..err….whenever to wait for this bus that the hostel promised they were sending.

Shortly after we got back to the “non” bus stop some weird guy from another hostel pulled up and started trying to convince us we’d have been better off going to his hostel now. He was South African and thus had the sort of humour or lack there of that I really didn’t get. Luckily in the end we didn’t wait that long before a gorgeous leggy girl came to collect us (yes surprise surprise she was from the Netherlands!!). We still however had to wait around for the dam Greyhound bus to arrive late so in the end made it to the hostel by about 11pm.

It was a pretty nice hostel though, really homely with a huge central relaxing area that had a bar and wii competitions and a pool etc. It also had a metal wood burner in the centre of the room which was bloody pointless considering there were no walls to this building just tie down plastic flaps. I also found out, the hard way, that it was on!!! My poor bum. Although we’d arrived late, we were offered a free drink and at first thought they were kidding but sure enough a bottle of beer and glass of red wine appeared within seconds of arriving, we were beginning to think we’d struck gold here and maybe we’d stay even longer. However the feeling was short lived when we found there had been a cock up with the bed booking and we were in different rooms the whole time. I started getting all mardy with the lady, as I normally do, and demanded she call the manager who was now off duty to sort it out. Needless to say this had the same affect as it always seems to where by they say “stick it up your arse” and I say “thank you very much”. So Nath was to be in a huge and noisy 14 bed dorm and I was in a 4 bed girl’s only room, which currently at 11.30pm had no one else in it.

After a few drinks and Nath having a go on the wii with our fellow travellers, a guy with a spike through his ear, a couple of very London sounding lads, and a welsh fella that I’m sure I recognised form uni, we decided it was now time for bed and as I wasn’t pleased still to be on my own, not only because there was still no one else in the room and it seemed like a stupid waste of time but also because this was to be the first night in over 7 months that Nath and I would spend apart. I know that sounds sad but I was going for a record here! 7 months down and he still hasn’t left/buried me out in the desert etc etc etc. so we suggested to the blonde who’d collected us that the best solution would be for Nath to stay the night in with me and then maybe move over in the morning if the moody manager couldn’t sort something else out in the morning for us; after all there wouldn’t be anymore pick ups now so the chances were we’d have the whole room to ourselves. I think her words were “you never told me any of this!” (and having seen the lady the next morning I can see why – read on).
So we went to bed in our lovely quite and empty 4 bed dorm, and enjoyed a good few hours sleep before all of a sudden we were both aware to two people entering the room in the dark and settling themselves into bed. I think we both thought to ourselves oh well only 2 of them so we’re fine to stay as we are and didn’t think any more of it. But as you have probably guessed by now, a few hours after this around 5am the fourth person came into the room. Nath and I laid there for a few moments, half asleep not sure if we had imagined the person, as it seemed they were just hanging by the bathroom, but as we woke up we realised they had seen all the beds were full and were probably panicking that there was no bed for them. So Nath shot out of bed pulled his clothes back on and went to his own dorm to collect the fresh bedding he hadn’t used to swap for the girl in the door way. She seemed a little confused quite rightly and tired and after Nath had left she just got straight into bed with her clothes on??!!

As we were already awake at this point, we decided to go and have breakfast (which was free yippee) now it was 6am and then went back to bed for a proper snooze. There’s always one at every hostel but the token crazy little old lady who was at the hostel was very excited about how cheap her 2 slices of bread and jam were “look the jam comes in its own little pot” – ahh bless her I think I’ll be like that when I’m her age. We also saw across the room the reason the staff last night didn’t want to argue with the owner – dressed in tight black leather and her hair scrapped back so tight it was almost showing as much as her cloths were, was the manager, who looked like some German dominatrix!! Anyway I got back to the dorm ready for some well earned rest. Now I’ve never shared with girls before and it’s amazing how long they (or we) take in the morning to get ready especially when I’m trying to get some more sleep. Finally after a lot of fannying around on their part I was alone and able to enjoy a good few hours sleep.



Uncannily Nath and I were both up at lunch time and met in a little kitchen that was next to my dorm room. It took a while as usual to find anything that was clean enough to use but eventually we managed to make the good old favourite cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. As a lovely garnish to our lunch we had the company of the talkative and slightly batty old lady from breakfast. She was sweet enough but we had to make our excuses and leave the kitchen before another day was wasted talking about the hostel and her life. So without much of a clue of where we were going and only a vague pencil drawn map to guide us we walked into town, via the beach, via the same beach and then via the hostel again (dam map!) On the way to the beach, the first time round, we noticed some kids digging excitedly in the sand with a weird tube like device and putting things in a bucket, but never did find out what they were. (I think they were collecting mud shrimps???) We wandered around the little town which was quite buzy actually, with a live band playing and lots of people fishing off the pier. On the way to the end of the pier we passed the two guys from the wii competition last night, fishing with a bucket and a bit of wire. Funnily enough they weren’t the only ones with a very basic design in fishing equipment; everyone had some kind of home made gear to fish with. There were families and kids and more professional looking fisherman all with the same thing in common – surrounded by a massacre a half dead fish trying to hop themselves back into the water!! It was terrible to see and maybe I don’t understand the love of fishing but unless you’re gonna kill them straight away and eat them then they really should be put back into the ocean. The poor things, I tried a few times to kick them back into the water but it would have been really obvious and I may have got lynched, but I wish looking back I had now!!

I had to leave so we headed back to the hostel to sort our bags out ready for our trip to Fraser Island the next day. When we went to collect the key to the baggage store and finally met the dominatrix owner, who was actually quite nice (and American or Canadian I still can’t tell). There had been, as I suspected, some confusion over our booking. They had a Nathan Jones from New Zealand booked in but not Nath. This was getting quite annoying as we tried to convince the woman that we had booked, that the lady at the Brisbane YHA had called ahead of us and confirmed it all, and that, in case they hadn’t already guessed, Nath was not from New Zealand. Turns out when we looked further into the booking and found that it was Nath’s number, the lady in Brisbane had just decided that Nath sounded kiwi so put him down as that – err hello we say chips not chups bro!!

Anyway that evening we joined in on the hostels bbq dinner which was massive and great, and Nath finally got his name down for the wii competition. It was the same group from the night before, the Londoners and the welsh guy, who I still hadn’t figured out where I knew from. However it was also Dr Who night, one of the brand new series, so I went off to watch that whilst Nath kicked their butts on the Wii. I had the company of the dear old lady again, which was fine but she didn’t really understand what was going on and I had to explain everything that was happening, it was like watching a film with my mum!! I won’t rant about DR Who again but I still do not like it! Anyway I went back to the bar and Nath was settled nicely between his wii competitors with a triumphant smile on his face having won. Each time you won you got given £20 dollars so If Nath could enter every night we could have paid for all of our accommodation! We then spent the rest of the night chatting with the Brits, and found out that the Londoners were actually from Kent and the welsh guy never went to uni, turns out I recognised him from our Brisbane tour (doh).

The Kent couple Emma and Dan were really young and fun to chat to. I think Dan was a bit stoned though as he spent most of the time looking through me when we were talking, obviously it could have just been my conversation. They had been working their way round OZ and were now on a break with all the money they’d earned and making their way up north. Because we got on so well and I still needed to find some more people to join Amy, Nath and I on a boat in the Whitsunday’s I mentioned it to Emma –figured it would be quite a laugh but didn’t think for one minute that anything would come of it, as its so easy to meet people have a connection with them and then never see them again, especially when we were off to Fraser island the next night and they had already been and there would only be a chance we were all in the same area at the same time later on in the month.

With my last night in with the girls, who had actually accosted me earlier and said they apologise for waking me this morning but they would also be leaving early again tomorrow so they will try and be quiet. I felt quite bad really it should have been me apologising to them for Nath being there but hey I was still tired from being kept awake so….yeah bitches thanks for the warning!
We were up really early the next day, well probably the same time as you’d get up for work (hehheh) and after a very rushed breakfast, as the bus arrived half hour early we jumped on board. We needn’t have rushed however as we had to wait for 3 foetuses to be born, slap on some make up and join us on the bus. I’m not exaggerating they can’t have been more than 12 (although I guess they couldn’t travel independently if they weren’t over 18 – oh god how old am I!!). The bus took us the short trip down to the marina where we signed our lives away again and waited for a second bus which took us to the boat. Once on the boat we watched the weather with some worry as it was slowly getting more and more grey the nearer we got to the island. I was really hoping it wouldn’t rain as we hadn’t really packed enough clothes for, well a change more than once really! Once on the island, which did look exactly like Morton Island (so I was hoping for the extra money this was gonna offer something different) we met our tour guide Susie a very ginger Aussies who was dressed like crocodile Dundee’s girlfriend!! Before long I realised we were definitely going to get something different to Morton Island on this trip – rain and a lot of it!!!

We climbed on board the coolest and highest monster truck bus thing I’d ever seen and got our favourite granny seats at the front. Our first stop at Eli Lake which was meant to be really reflective but as we arrived the rain started to arrive and it turned the lake into, well just an average lake. We all tried to seem excited by it and wandered around the edge. The only interesting part so far had been the bright red carnivorous flower/moss on the floor, which grew really well out of sand (being as that’s all that the island was made of). By now we had been up early, were getting a bit cold and really needed some food, so luckily the next stop was a little bbq area where we set up for our pack lunch. Now the idea, as on all of these group tours, was that every pitches in and our mouths were watering at the idea of a lovely hot bbq, I was all ready to offer to turn the meat (so I could keep warm) but our bonfire or bbq was about to be pissed on (not only because it was raining even harder now) but because we weren’t having a bbq, the group to arrive after us were which is why all the material was there waiting but we had paid for the cheap arse end of the tour so we were having sandwiches and salad – mmmm yummy, I just hoped I didn’t bite my freezing fingers as I wouldn’t have notice with them being so numb!

During lunch we finally got talking to a few of the people on our tour. They had all, until now, been very quiet and we were beginning to think it was gonna be a hard few days work. Two of the girls were sisters and were studying to be doctors. I don’t know why I still find people who are younger than me studying for amazing jobs or difficult jobs so weird. It’s as though I figure everyone younger than me must still just be at college or thinking about doing something pretty menial. Maybe that reflects more on my feelings of inadequacy, assuming that everyone younger then me must have a job of lower pay/stress/complexity than me – oh well, I play with dogs for a living so guess I cant complain. So after our cold lunch we headed off on a rainforest walk, which Suzie said would be really good and show us the fauna of the area. It was pissing down at this point but she assured us it would stop soon and as long as everyone had rain macs….Nath and I however had not thought to bring them, I dunno assuming it was gonna be a sunny trip, so we had to borrow the on board emergency ponchos.

Well all I can say is I didn’t really see anything on the walk because I was facing down the whole way what with the rain dripping off my nose. I’ve never known rain to be so hard and continuous. I was soaked through within minutes regardless of the poncho and so was everyone else. Trying to stay dry in that sort of rain was just futile. I laughed out loud to myself at one point because I was just soo wet. I can completely see now why they call it a rain forest. Susie had gone on ahead on the sand road to collect us at the other end, so when Nath and I who were at the front of the group arrived at the bus wet through, she did what ever any decent tour guide would do for their clients….she pissed herself laughing and took a photo! Luckily having been travelling for a while now, Nath and I are pretty laid back about all this sort of thing (as much as we moan about it) so we found it all funny too. Some of the rest of our tour however were not quite as happy which added to the warm moist atmosphere that was already in the bus on our drive onwards.

I was soaked through and neither of us had much to change into, so sat wrapped in our towels. Of course the whole bus was now soaked and our bags were now getting wet from all the others walking passed our seats at the front (maybe not such a good idea, but we did have a little more space and a better view). Even though we were wet through and the others on the bus were a little pissed off, Susie took us to the pis de resistance of Fraser Island, Lake Mackenzie. This is a huge fresh water lake that is surrounded by white sand and the deepest turquoise blue. I’d seen people laying in it in bikinis looking like they were on some tropical island and I’d been really looking forward to having a frolic in the fresh water, away form any nasty crocs etc. As you may have guessed, when we got there the colour was a little less impressive to say the least. I was cold, very cold and wet but was not about to come all his way and not get into the water, so after trying to convince a few others on the bus I made my way in my already wet bikini (which I’d been wearing all day) and a damp towel down to the beach edge. It still looked a nice blue but my god was it cold! I was the first one in and gave out a little shriek which some people heard and therefore slowed their own entry. Not everyone did hear this squeal though so when others from the bus finally arrived I enjoyed very much telling them it wasn’t that bad and watching them gasp as they realised I was clearly lying bwhahahahaha

The two doctors students came in as did another girl who was already working as a GP, it looked like Nath and I had joined some gp convention, but apparently none of them knew each other it was just a coincidence –spooky!! Well turns out not really, when you study to be a GP you have to do a year abroad, poor student doctors have to go somewhere else to live for a year for free!! Anyway jealous rant over-after I had managed to get completely into the lake I tried swimming out to where it got really dark blue and although I knew there wasn’t anything more than algae living in the water I got nervous as the water got darker and decided to swim back in! Now I had accomplished my swim in the lake it was time to get out and try and dry off. Susie had made up an urn of hot water for tea and biscuits which were the first warm thing we’d had since the bbq at the hostel the night before. We all stood around chatting and trying to keep warm and as these tours never like to change the itinerary regardless of weather or passenger desire, we still had another half hour in the cold to stand. I felt very under qualified talking to three doctors and a civil engineer all under 26 years old grrrrrr but luckily, as with most people, they were more interested in what I did – phew!

After a long wet day we headed back to the hotel we were staying at, well eco lodge to be precise. I was so glad at his point that we hadn’t decided to hire a tent and a van as I’d have hated to go back there now and still be wet and cold all night. The jealousy I was feeling for those people in their private 4 by 4’s we’d seen pass us earlier was now turning to glee. On arrival we were all assigned rooms and shown where the laundry room was, which was petty much one washer and one dryer in a small room. So I immediately put our clothes straight in before even heading to the room having realised there would be a rush – I’m so clever sometimes (when Nath suggests things first). The lodges were nice but a little open to the elements, which would have been great if it was nice and sunny but it was still raining. Most of the front of the lodge was just fly screen and there was only a bar heater in our room. So one by one we all had our room heaters on and were stood like moths around the heat. Now the dryer I had nabbed first thing was only on a short cycle and the two sisters we were sharing with went to add their clothes to it, after I had informed them of my sneaky plan, but found that the dryer session had already stopped and someone else had got straight in there and taken our still damp clothes out, dumped them on the side and started their dryer session – how bloody rude!! I was cold and hungry and now furious and there was no one around to blame. So those heaters we were all huddled round were now littered with clothes hung from door ways etc to try and dry them in time for dinner. I even ironed some of my clothes in the hope that that would help (I remembered seeing my mum “iron” back in 86 so knew what to do).

Dinner seemed to take ages to arrive so when it did and we headed over to the restaurant area with our fairly dry clothes back on and I was glad to find it was a buffet spag bol bonanza! It was also happy hour so Nath and I and the dr girls all joined in with some jugs of cocktail and all was right with the world again. Susie soon joined us and got us starting some drinking games involved tipping a cup over and downing a drink, which my team did poorly on and ended up doing numerous forfeits whilst Nath’s team looked on and videoed in some cases laughing their arses off. For the whole day and now into the evening, the 3 foetuses that we had had to wait for in the morning had never joined in with us. So Nath and I had attempted at dinner to make conversation and found out they were on their summer off before uni. When Nath and I started reminiscing, it must have come across either dull or condescending as they didn’t join in again for the rest of the tour!! After a few more drinks we headed off to bed fairly early, keen to bring a disappointing day to an end and get into a warm bed.

Next morning we woke up like a school kid waiting for the snow, and peered out in the hope that the sun was going to be blazing down on us. However it wasn’t, not even close, so this time Nath and I wore something more suitable and packed our spare clothes in case of a repeat of the drenching. We were off to see the rest of the main sites of Fraser Island today, all of which in the brochure looked great but now in the grey, it felt very much like we were constantly looking at well wet sand I guess. We were driving down this really long beach which was quite fun and passed lots of apparently coloured sands (which in the wet didn’t really look that impressive) and then passed a single dingo on the rest of our drive up the beach. It was really impressive to see one out in the day time, people that camp over in the 4 by 4’s said they see them all the time, and would tells stories of how you have to go to the toilet in pairs and bury all your rubbish but this was the fist and only dingo we saw. Just like a giant fox crossed with a dog, the only remaining pure bred dingoes on the island had a white tipped tail apparently, and no one living on the island used to be ale to have pets In case of interbreeding, but it turned out this law had been ignored or not policed for some time now so the population of dingoes has been changing as the dog genes mingle. I was half expecting to see something far more ferocious looking as the entire complex we were staying at had a perimeter fence that was electrified to stop the dingoes coming in, but up close they looked so sweet (maybe it was the drowned rat look from all the rain).

We made it all the way to the top of the island, heading for the champagne pools, which are rocky outcrops at the edge of the land which bubble up when the waves crash over the top of them and fill them up, so sort of like a natural Jacuzzi. First of all we stopped for lunch at another outside bbq area, which we knew by now wouldn’t be for us. However as usual it started to pour with rain again so we all sat on the truck passing salad etc up and down the isle whilst we waited for the weather to improve. Again it didn’t really get much better so only half of us bothered to go to the pools, which no one had said were actually a bit of a walk along a board walk. So wrapped in a towel Nath and I made our way to the pools as again we weren’t gonna come all this way and not set foot in the pools no mater how cold they were going to be. With it raining we were pretty wet before we even got there which actually made the sea water feel petty warm. The waves did as promised and crashed over into the pools and made the bubbles of the natural Jacuzzi, however I was so cold by this point that I wanted out already. Nath had been taking photos of me, so I needed to swap with him so he could experience the cold water and his balls retreating up his arse. There were signs all over the place warning of how slippery the rocks were and to be careful of all the razor sharp shells suck to them. I was stepping so carefully with my flip flops on making sure I didn’t drop the camera (as my blood isn’t as important as our precious camera) that I did actually slip just briefly on a rock, felt a bit of pain through the cold but didn’t think of anything of it until Nath got out to join me.

My foot was covered in blood and was throbbing but I wasn’t sure what I had done. So when I turned my foot over I nearly puked as there was a bit slice of my toes hanging off (err turns my stomach just thinking about it now) so of course with the realisation of what I had done I started to feel the pain, and Nath had to help me hobble back along the now bloody long walk back to a cold and dirty bus. Luckily Susie had a medical kit so I managed to clean most of the foot ok, and having a good few doctors on board they were able to check it was all ok. So feeling sorry for myself, the rest of the drive back along the beach, stopping off at a ship wreck and other tourist attractions I stayed on the bus and sulked. So with the weather really not looking like it was gonna improve and Susie not wanting to get lynched on the bus, drove us back to the vaguely warm hostel. Which was great for a short while till we realised that being back early meant there was nothing else to do so pretty much the whole bus, not including the 3 foetuses, sat around in the communal lounge of one of the lodges drinking tea and beer we had managed to buy from the expensive on site shop.

On the trip we had been out numbered by the number of German people so with the beer flowing we all found the conversation turned to language and pronunciation etc. it turns out that whilst having a photo of the group taken, one of the German guys said “winky winky” which is their equivalent to “say cheese”, which meant that half of us (i.e. the British half) fell and about laughing followed by the Germans themselves once I had explained what we found so funny. With another buffet dinner and some large cocktails it was time for half of us to get the late ferry back leaving everyone else to enjoy their 3rd full day of rain hahahahah. So Nath and I and the two sisters got on board a very bumpy ferry which after a long cold day actually rocked us to sleep. Looking back it was a fun tour now I’m warm and sat here writing, but at the time I was wishing we hadn’t bothered – it was like an expensive holiday at home, full of bad weather, sandwiches and Germans – well ok not quite like home but close!

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Photos

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The Pier of Death

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I hope this nice weather lasts!!

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mmmmmm nice!!

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Errrrr whats that on your face??

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Another early start

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First stop, walking round Basin lake

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Flesh eating plant

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Nice bush!

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Rain drops keep falling on our heads.....

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Yes its still raining!!

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Lake McKenzie

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Its not cold honest!!!

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Quick take the bloody picture i'm freezing!

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mmmmm Tea and biscuits

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Cant wait to get into some dry clothes - oh no wait -I dont have any!!

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Trying to dry our clothes

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Happy Hour :)

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I've only had that much to drink honest

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Stupid cup game (sore loser -Nath)

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Loosers doing press-ups (Mandy is at the far end)

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Loosers doing sit ups (oh look, there is mandy again)

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What cup size are you?

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Next day -well at least its not raining.....

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Oh how nice its raining......again!

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Our tour truck

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Mrs Dingo

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Wet sand

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More wet sand