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Published: October 8th 2005
mr whale says hello from oz!
(note to self, whale, not windsurfer...)left agnes water bright and early after saying goodbye to gus 😊
next stop, hervey bay, about 5 hours south of agnes. the bus journey was nothing after that monster of a journey down from airlie!!!!! :D
me and sharn checked in and had just enough time to walk into town, deduce that hervey bay was rubbish (small, sleepy, nothing to write home about really which for some reason was a bit of a shock because i was expecting something similar to airlie?! not sure why, but anyhoo!!) and get back to the hostel for our fraser island briefing!!!!
so yeah, fraser island briefing - fraser island is the world's largest sand island and its just off the coast of queensland near hervey bay. we were booked onto a 3 day camping trip, all tres exciting! you go with total strangers in a 4WD and do a self guided tour around the island!
there were 14 in our group in total, 7 in each vehicle and, as with the whitsunday sailing trip, i was the youngest! seems to be a pattern. ah well, doesn't bother me. no one was over 28 so its not like i felt
the knifeblade sandblow
now that is one hell of a lot of sand! left out or anything! can't remember everyone's names but in our 4WD group there was me, sharn, darren and kieran (two totally lovely irish blokes), griffin (another mad but lovely irish blokie), nita (hm. i shall reserve judgment. basically she did sod all for the three days, but anyway!) and peter (don't even get me started! he did nothing but annoy me for 3 days!!!!!!!! gr. and he was german. not that that has anything to do with it 😊)
the briefing basically consisted of a little information video telling us about the island, and to beware the viscious dingoes!! aaah, that and the sharks. hmmmm. forgot to mention that. the waters around fraser island are shark totally shark infested. it is a breeding ground for tiger sharks and at this time of year - lucky us!! - hammerheads and great whites come to town too. goodo! so basically, yeah, the sea is a total no go area. scary stuff. you should have seen sharns face!!!! hehe!!
when they guy asked for team leaders no one stepped forward so in the end me and sharn volunteered and ended up doing the organising and food shopping and basically everything
cheeeeeeese!
me at the knifeblade sandblow that involved thinking for the whole 3 days. (not bitter at all, hehe 😊) ooooh, when we were going to the supermarket, the guy who was driving the courtesey bus took us to this place in hervey bay where the have just hundreds and hundreds of huge bats hanging from the trees! it was amazing, and i have never heard such a racket!!!!!! was a strange sight.
the next morning we had to leave to be at the 4WD hire company for 7.45am. once we got there we had yet another briefing about the island (ok, we get it, dingoes, sharks, sea bad!) and how to actually drive a 4WD. me and sharn checked the vehicles over and checked that we had all the equipment (look at me being little miss pro-active!).
oooh, and discovered that germans are totally lacking in the sense of humour department - when peter asked how we put the air back in the tryes if we had to let them down at all i told him that he had to blow them up. he wasn't impressed 😊 obviously off to a good start there!! hehe.
anyhow, after that, it was off to
group shot :)
at base camp after dinner on the first night fraser! didn't see any whales or dolphins on the ferry crossing despite being told that we "probably" would 😞 aw well!!! peter continued to be a first class pain in the arse, ignoring me when i asked him for maps and when i was actually trying to be helpful (honest, i was!!!).
once on fraser, darren did most of the driving. it was a bumpy ride! there are no proper roads on the island and most of the time you're either on a dirt track, a sand track or actually driving on the beach. got bogged in the soft sand a few times, at which point we had to all pile out and push!! so so funny!!
as we were driving up the beach all of a sudden i thought "oooh, look, there's a windsurfer out there" the obvious follow on to this was "um, a windsurfer in shark infested waters? i think not!" it was a whale!!!!! he was slapping the water with his fin, soooooo cool! we all sat there watching for about 10minutes. it was amazing! after all this excitment we carried on along the beach, minding out for the wet sand, the dry sand,
the drop offs and creeks (dangerous business this 4WD thing!!) and managed to bypass everything that we were supposed to be doing on the first day! when i pointed this out everyone said we were supposed to be going straight to camp. um. no. i think i may have been the only person that was listening at the briefing. so we turned around (go me with the power trip 😊) and stopped at the pinacles, some cliffs of coloured sand, that to be honest were rubbish 😊 then off we went to lake allom which took quite a while to get too and really wasn't worth it. the lake was huge, yeah, but the water was murky so none of us actually went in. on the way back we went to the knifeblade sandblow which kind of made up for it. the knifeblade sandblow is a huge huge sand dune and it really is amazing.
oooh, more excitement, on the way to camp we actually had to stop as there was a huge big fat snake crossing the road!!!! when i went to get back into the jeep i was like "i'm sure i can hear someone calling my
name..." sure enough, in the jeep behind us was jenny from pizza express!!!!! so weird.
we were staying at a place called base camp which is a permanent campsite - it has toilets and showers and bbqs and everything and it meant that we only had to set up camp once in the 3 days 😊 saved a lot of hassle. senting up the tents was a proper mission, but once it was done we all went to sort out dinner. we had a bqq, and me and sharn ended up cooking it all. didn't really mind, but still, i'm seeing a trend here! was a bloody good bbq though! (apart from the chicken which wasn't actually cooked. even though it had been on the bbq for like an hour. soooo not my fault 😊) eep, had to spend the whole of dinner time warding off advance from a pervy russian dude called danny who was in the other group. eventually had enough and shouted at him and told him to leave me alone. am getting good at this - i seem to attract all the weirdos and pervs over here!!!!!!
awww, how paranoid was i about the
bloody dingoes! i kept waking up thinking i could hear breathing (which was obviously the 3 other people in the tent, duh!-i was sharing with sharn, darren and kieran) and that the dingoes were goin to get me. at one point i actually woke up and thought "oh no! the dingoes are going to eat my shoes!!!" because i'd left them outseide the tent. i even got up and went and got them. obviously, logic doesn't exist at 3am...
despite my worst fears, i actually survived the night 😊 at breakfast i educated everyone on how to barbeque toast, good fun. sharna drove a bit of the way to indian head but once we got onto the soft sand darren took over. oh my god, we got totally stuck in the wet sand at one point, which is a total no no. really really dangerous as the water can wash more and more sand around the tires and eventually drag you out to sea :s eep! i have never seen 5 people move so fast!!! we all jumped out of the 4WD (apart from peter who stayed in the front filming the whole thing - i swear to god,
i could have throttled him then and there!!), waves washing around our feet and had to push the 4WD up onto dry sand!!!!!! the panic, the fear! it was hilarious 😊 (in retrospect, of course 😊)
that little drama over we eventually made it up to indian head which is a big cliff looking out over the ocean. we were told in the briefing that it was fantastic but i don't think that anything could have actually prepared us for it.
we spent about 2 hours up there but i could easily have sat there for the rest of the day. we saw whales and rays and fish and turtles and sharks and dolphins!! it was fantastic.
aaah, i didn't actually see this, but i heard all the commotion from the other side of the cliff - apparently a group of 4 lads didn't know or chose to ignore the whole "shark infested water" talk and went for a swim. what the...??!?!?!! people were screaming at them and shouting, it was crazy. apparently you could actually see the sharks heading towards them (the water was that clear). scary stuff :s i can't believe that they did it.
and lived to tell the tale. they all got out just in time. eep.
when we were sitting up there we could see some fins in the distance, just kind of sticking out of the water and soon realised that it was about 4 dolphins all swimming together. at the bottom of the cliff there was a huge shoal of fish, so huge and dense that the water was practically black where they were. then all of a sudden the shoal was totally surrounded by a group of (i'm not exaggerating, i swear to you) about 30 dolphins. it was the most amazing thing that i have ever ever seen. the dolphins circled the fish and then suddenly started jumping out of the water an into the middle of it all eating the fish. then when they were done they all swam off playing, jumping in and out of the water. it was beautiful to watch. and then you had all the sharks come in after the dolphins had gone to pick up the leftovers.
so yeah, indian head, easily the highlight of the fraser trip!!!!! i was totally lost for words after all that.
on the
way back down bumped into jenny again - seriously, this is actually starting to freak me out!!
next stop, champagne pools, a group of huge rockpools which are the only safe place to swim in saltwater on the island. the were quite nice but nothing amazing, still, it was dead nice to be able to go for a swim! we headed back with me driving! yay! it was brilliant fun. darren sat up front with me, helping me out when i didn't know what to do and stuff which was reassuring. but i didn't drive for too long, maybe half an hour? its really really tiring because you have to concentrate really hard the whole time and you never really feel like you're in control even though you have the steering wheel in your hand, which is a little scary. go me driving a 4WD!! i obviously have endless talents 😊 😊 😊
we had to stop about half way back to base camp as the beach was closed - there had been a really bad accident and there was a helicopter and everything. we had to sit there for about an hour while they cleared the accident.
apparently it was really really bad and to be honest i don't think the guy involved stood much of a chance - he was riding in the back of a yute with no seat belt and got thrown out of the back when the driver went over a dune and landed on his neck :s not good. totally made you realise how dangerous it all was though.
after they re-opened the beach we went back to camp, had some lunch then headed to eli creek, the largest freshwater creek on the island. it was bloody freezing! decided against swimming and instead opted to bury my legs in the sand. its best not to ask really 😊 again, had to shout at danny who obviously doesn't understand the word 'no' when he tried to drag me into the creek. eep.
me and sharn made dinner again, and once again it was tres yummy 😊 we all had a really fun evening, had a few drinks, told stories, played games, built a beer-amid (the irish lads totally lived up to the stereotype!!!!) and played basketball with the empty crushed cans and the recycling bin (it was an attempt to tidy
up, honest!!) all brilliant fun. me, darren, nita and griffin stayed up a bit later than the others but eventually went to our tents when the (drunk) park rangers turned up and decided to hang out with us. hm, maybe not eh!!! stayed up for a while chatting with darren in the tent before finally falling alseep. good day in all really 😊
super early start!!! had to pack all the tents up and pack the 4WDs up. totally into this whole climbing on top of the 4WD thing! its great fun, and you feel dead important and powerful like, hehe! last day on the island, so off we went to see some of the lakes. first stop was lake boomanjin which was huge and the water, although clear, was the colour of iodine, which was a little offputting :s went for a paddle but soon got annoyed by all the hundreds of flies that were buzzing around so we went to the next lake.
lake birrabeen. WOW. this was on a par with whitehaven. totally underrated. we had the whole place to ourselves. the sand was the same as it was on whitehaven and the water was
clear like glass. the only offputting thing about the water was the huge drop off about 10metres out! but griffin pushed me in so i didn't actually have much say in the whole "shall i go swimming or not" matter 😊 lol. we spent about an hour here. it was so so beautiful and serene!!! loved every minute and was a bit upset to leave i don't mind saying!
its a shame more people don't actually go there, but a blessing at the same time i guess otherwise we wouldn't have had it to ourselves!!
final stop - lake mckenzie. was really really excited about this as it is totally raved out in all the guide books and stuff. when we got there, once again bumped into jenny!!! right, lake mckenzie. hm. after birrabeen, to be perfectly honest it was a bit of an anticlimax. still really really beautiful, don't get me wrong. but the sand wasn't as white. and there were so many people there. apparently its among the top 10 beaches in the world. i can't deny that its better than most i've been on 😊 hehe. but still, i would say out of the 2, birrabeen
the evil goanna
seconds after this picture was taking i wasn't laughing at its japanese hostages anymore!! was much muhc more beautiful and serene. mckenzie is still in the same vein as the whole white sand, clear blue/turquoise water thing. just so you get the picture 😊
we went and had some lunch before beginning our sunbathing. i had to climb on top of the 4WD again to get some cutlery by which point everyone except darren had left. so off we went to find everyone, got totally lost, stumbled across a japanese couple who were being held hostage on a picnic table by a huge big goanna!! it was hilarious. until the goanna turned around and headed towards us, at which point we had to run and climb under a fence to escape, me cutting my leg in the process!!!!! nice one 😊 definitely got the adrenaline pumping!!!
spent about 2 hours swimming and sunbathing at mckenzie before heading back to the barge landing.
so yeah, 3 whole days on an island where the totally drum it into you about the dangerous evil dingoes and we didn't see a single one 😊 nice one, hehe!!!
once we got back to hervey everyone was obviously sick of the sight of each other, so
it was brilliant when we found out that we were all in the same dorm!!!! noooooooooo!!!!!!!! (well, i thought it was funny 😊)
it was soooooooooo good to have a shower and wash my hair though!! actually felt a bit more human 😊 hehe. had the most brilliant time on fraser though, despite the few hiccups and tantrums that were had 😊 went out that evening to an irish pub with a few of the people from the trip and had a good time but was soooo knackered that went to bed uber early! seems to be a bit of a theme from this trip! 😊 still, i shall be nice and rested when i come back to you all!
xx
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