Fraser Island, Fruitpicking and a Fancy tent


Advertisement
Australia's flag
Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Mackay
July 3rd 2008
Published: July 3rd 2008
Edit Blog Post

Hi all,
When I wrote my last blog I was in Brisbane and that seems like ages ago now. After Brizzy we’ve been traveling up the coast to Mackay, where I am now, by way of Noosa Heads, Rainbow Beach, Fraser Island, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Mundubbera, Rockhampton and Yeppoon. Although some members of the original group that met in Byron Bay are still here (Manu, Benny and I), some of the others have gone their separate ways. That’s all part of traveling, and we’ve met up with new people along the way.

As I’m typing this, I’m sitting on a camping chair with the river at my back and the ocean to my right, the laptop hooked up to my car battery in a deserted stretch of nature next to the beach in Mackay. We’ve been living here, out in nature, for almost two weeks now and it has been pretty good. Once you get used to not having any facilities and having to sneak into campgrounds for showers, it’s really not much of a sacrifice. Waking up with the sun rising over the ocean and the sounds and sights of the tide moving in or out of the river is amazing. But before I get into all that, I’ll give a short account of what happened before.

Noosa Heads is a very nice holiday town and something of a gateway to the Fraser Island/Whitsundays area. We got all our supplies there for Fraser, bought our permits and readied the car. Then Izzy, Gabe, Ajay, Niels and I set out for what was to be more of an adventure than any of us had reckoned. We stayed the night in Rainbow Beach, the closest place to the ferry that goes to the south of Fraser Island and awoke the next day to rain, and a lot of it. Since Niels had to be on the bus to Airlie Beach in a few days, we didn’t have the luxury of sitting out the bad weather and headed over to the ferry. What I expected was a dock with a ramp and all that but instead the ferry just lands on the beach in perfect Invasion-of-Normandy style and you drive onto it and off it in similar fashion on the other site. Pretty cool stuff.

Fraser Island is a big sand island, 100+km long and maybe 20-30km wide and is listed as a world heritage site as it is the only place in the world where rainforest grows directly in the sand. The main highway on the island is the eastern beach, with several inland roads giving access at high tide as well as leading to some of the beautiful pristine lakes on the island, of which we saw none. Needless to say, you need a serious 4x4 vehicle to be able to visit the island and about 90% of the cars we saw there were landcruisers. Driving on the beach is pretty cool once you’ve gotten used to it and adjusted your tire pressure down quite a bit. There are patches of really soft sand that you get stuck in if you’re not paying attention and loads of water crossings where the rainwater spills out into the sea (well in our case anyway, I think normally there aren’t quite so many). The island has a lot of places where you can camp next to the beach and there are a handful of official campgrounds, some of them fenced for protection from the dingos which you are warned about at every turn. There’s also a small town which has everything you’ll ever need at highly inflated prices.

The first day was beautiful because the clouds gave way to the sun and we drove around the beach quite happily, taking pictures and fooling around before setting up camp in one of the fenced campgrounds for the night because those are the only places where you’re allowed to make a campfire. We met some nice (female) backpackers at the site, had a good bbq and lots of goon and a general good time. At around ten in the evening it started to rain and it pretty much never stopped again. We erected a tarp to shield us from the rain which worked for a little bit but between the monsoon strength rain and the wind we spent most of the second day huddled up in our camp drinking and eating, although we did go for a really cool drive through the jungle (very Jurassic Park) to have a look at the sand dunes. At night it dried up long enough for us to make a campfire and sit around it for a while with a group of very drunk English backpackers before it started pissing down again. Then the wind got properly involved and the tent was pelted with broken branches. We also lost our tarp and gazebo to the wind. The next morning some rangers came by to clear all the broken trees and branches and told us there was a storm warning for the whole island and that most people were evacuating to the mainland. There was a fishing competition on the island and so some 250 boats were somewhere on it with their respective owners and families. After some debate we decided to heed their advice and started heading south down the beach towards the ferry. Because of the strong winds together with the already high tides, the car was getting splashed with sea water left and right while the rain was pretty much a continual sheet of water from the top. We were making good time until on one disastrous crossing too much water made its way into the engine bay and took out the alternator, I think because of shoddy wiring. It seems some self-proclaimed mechanic changed the wiring at some point and didn't do a very good job of it. I didn’t realize that the alternator was gone straight away and so we gradually ran
Jurassic ParkJurassic ParkJurassic Park

Clearing the road after the big storm
down the battery with the radio, AC against the fogging windows, lights and windshield wipers and then car stalled. We got a jump from someone, managed to drive for another little bit, stalled again at the next water crossing and so on for about six times. Because some of us had to get out of the car to flag down other cars, connect the leads or a tow rope and disconnect it again, we were completely soaked. My jeans and hoody were drenched and I was wet down to my underwear. Every time I got out of the car, the wind chilled me right down until after three or four times I was shivering from the cold.

The tide was still coming in so we got someone to tow us up a dune and away from the water where we would have to stay until morning when the tow truck could come get us or we could get some other form of help. We had food but no shelter and no way of erecting it in the storm, so no way to cook it. On top of that we were all soaking wet and we knew the temperature would
Good wave action on FraserGood wave action on FraserGood wave action on Fraser

View from Indian Heads, the whole beach looked like this with waves going every which way
drop a lot more at night. In short, not a good position to be in. Then a 4x4 drove up with a young couple in it we had seen previously while getting a jump from someone else. They’d doubled back to make sure we were ok and now offered to tow us to the next village, some 10km away. Eager to be out of the cold we agreed - a stupid decision in hindsight- and so we set off down the beach again. It went fine for a few minutes although I was very scared of hitting his vehicle since I couldn’t see anything without windshield wipers. Then we got bogged down. After some pushing and pulling we managed to get the car out but a few meters further the landcruiser sank into the soft sand again and was stuck. The small 4x4 wasn’t strong enough to pull us out and so they had to leave us there to quickly drive to town and get help. That doesn’t sound too bad but the place where we were stuck was right on the upcoming tide line and I could see the waves getting closer and every now and then one of them would swirl around the tires, digging them deeper in the sand. On top of that, it was getting dark. We sat in the car for about twenty minutes, trying to think of something to do. I tried calling the police as we just had mobile connection again but they just said ‘tough luck, you shouldn’t have been out on the beach at high tide’. Well we weren’t but then we broke down. Besides which we were driving behind a ranger who told us there was no problem yet and we could just keep going towards the ferry.

Finally, just as I had pretty much given up hope of keeping my car in one piece, a large group of 4x4’s and utes pulled up. They belonged to a couple of Ozzy families who were vacationing on Fraser Island and were making their way back to town. They got us started again in pretty short order but at the next water crossing we shut down again. After four tries like this and the sun rapidly disappearing, it was time to abandon the car. We towed it up to a high part of the beach where the waves wouldn’t reach (hopefully)
Shower time!Shower time!Shower time!

All of us in the hot shower after our adventure on the beach on Fraser
and all of us piled into the back of the ute and off we went. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden in the back of a pickup truck on the beach through water crossings but I can promise you it is a very cold and miserable affair. Luckily it only lasted for about ten minutes but during this time we got splashed with spray every time the car went through the water, while the wind was still whipping us from the side.

In town we were lucky to find a nice room in a resort that would sleep all five of us and at a reasonable price, I believe it was $130. As soon as we got in the room we all piled into the big shower and stayed there for at least the next thirty minutes. Once we got warm we broke out a deck of plastic cards and played a game of shithead in the shower. Later that evening I went out with Greg, the tow truck driver, in his ute to collect my car. By now the tide had come down a lot and it was no longer raining so it was quite easy to tow the car back to town. After a really good night’s sleep, Greg diagnosed the problem in the morning and offered to recharge the battery so we could at least get off the island. He didn’t have time to actually fix the problem because he was driving pretty much flat out getting all the stuck cars and boats to safety. When I said he was probably used to weather like this he said “Not really, I’ve lived here for ten years now but it usually doesn’t get this bad”. Great stuff Greg, thanks!

After breakfast we headed the last hour or so down to the ferry through very windy but sunny conditions. The eye of the storm was almost directly above us and so it wasn’t as bad as the other days had been, although the next days were promising to be even worse. When we got the ferry there was a line of roughly 100 vehicles in front of us. A quick calculation told me that they could ferry about 8 cars off the island per 15 minutes, which made this about a four hour queue. Not good if you’ve got car trouble. So I sent our charming
Ready for work!Ready for work!Ready for work!

All dressed up in our new (well second hand) hick shirts for our first day of fruitpicking
little Indian Ajay to the ferry lady to explain our predicament and sure enough, we were allowed to take the next ferry off the island, haha! There’s nothing like the feeling of driving past a whole queue and cutting in front.

Since Fraser I’ve given the car some attention and the alternator sorted itself out after a good few sunny days. It’s not working at 100% so I will have to have it looked at eventually but for now it’s charging the batteries enough that I can travel without problems.
After our adventure on Fraser and one day of recuperating in Rainbow Beach it was time to start work. Benjamin and Manu had gone to Bundaburg to do some tomato picking so we followed them there, but not before saying good bye to Niels in Rainbow and picking up English Louise in Hervey Bay. Upon arrival in Bundy, the boys had already left for greener pastures since work there apparently sucked. They were now in Mundubbera, the citrus capital of Queensland, to pick mandarins and so we followed them there, to the campground at the Big Mandarin (they love their big things here in Australia).

Mundaburra was our home for about two weeks and it was a perfect little country town set among rolling hills with cattle and orchards at every turn. We met up with a lot of people who we had previously been travelling with and the campground was like a big family, with Jeanette - or Mama J- our landlady at the head of it. Mandarin picking turned out to be pretty shitty work as you don’t so much pick them as snip them off with a pair of snips. This requires two hands and with mandarins being fairly small, it takes quite a while to fill a bin. With practice you do get better at it and in the end I think I was making about $16 an hour on them. On one of the weekends we went to a nearby dairy town, Monto, which was having its bi-annual rodeo festival and this was a lot of fun. A proper country festival with a pretty decent rodeo, a hilarious wild-cow milking competition and a good band. We managed to sleep 8 people in a van there which was also a new record and generally just had a really good time.

The next week we switched over from mandarins to oranges which was a lot better work, I was making $20 an hour on the first day of this, but the difficulty is that you can only pick oranges when they’re dry or you bruise the skin, so that meant we often couldn’t start until 10 or 11 and on some days after a tiny bit of rain, we couldn’t pick at all. After a few days of this we realized we weren’t actually making much money and decided to head up to Rockhampton to find some work in a factory. What followed was about a week of job hunting in various towns without much success (too dry, too wet, etc) until we arrived here in Mackay where we spotted a flyer that said ‘labourers wanted’. We called the next day and were told we could start on Tuesday, about four days later. During these days we also met up with Nik and Rama, two Canadians we’d met in Noosa and through them we met Nils (DE) who is now traveling with us.
When we arrived here we couldn’t find accommodation anywhere and so after talking to a couple of people I approached a hotel owner who was supposed to have dorm beds, but they were all sold out. However he allowed us to sleep for free on the balcony on some mattresses and he even had an old room with a bathroom for us to shower in. We ended up just piling the mattresses in the old room and sleeping there for two nights. Free accommodation with toilet and hot shower… not bad!

On Friday we went out and met Julia (DE) and Amanda (USA) in town. They were staying near the beach, just camping in nature and Amanda was giving kitesurf lessons to Julia. They invited us over for the next day and we decided to stay out here as well, saving $20 each a night, at least until we started work. Over the next few days Amanda taught us all how to handle a kite and Nils and I got as far as getting into the water and on the board, but the wind wasn’t really strong enough anymore to pull us out of the water. The next day we started work and so I’ll have to pick up where I left off another day. It’s definitely a very cool sport. On top of that Amanda turned out be a very nice girl and she has a very nice van with a very nice double bed in the back which sure beats sleeping in a van with three snoring men.

Work turned out to be alright but very heavy. We built up a big showground tent for an exhibition. The main tent is 120m long and 40m wide, with another 40m x 20m tent in front and a whole bunch of smaller tents next to it. We did everything from building up the steel frame to putting on the roof, putting in the walls and the floors, carpeting the floors and building up the stands. I’ve got too many blisters to count, some of them pretty bad from being opened up again every day and even though we finished work two days ago, I’m still pretty sore. I’m definitely a lot stronger now though and it was an interesting experience to put up a whole tent like that. The atmosphere was a lot different to the fruitpicking too, with lots of characters on the work site, including our boss Walter who made the terminator look like a pansy. Tall, muscles of steel, a booming voice that could easily reach across a football field and a suitably bull-like temper. All in all it was a pretty good experience.

Today we’re going to clean up all the cars, fix some little problems and then it’s up north to Airlie Beach and a few weeks of partying and relaxing until the money runs out again. This backpacking life ain’t all that bad.
That’s all for this installation of my blog, I hope you enjoyed it and the pictures and I’ll try to put up the next one a little sooner now that I’m not working anymore. Once more, just for the record, a lot of these pictures came from other people's cameras.



Additional photos below
Photos: 28, Displayed: 28


Advertisement

Building the small tentsBuilding the small tents
Building the small tents

this was actually the best bit out of the whole build. We put them up really fast.


3rd July 2008

Heya Martin
Hi mate, good to see the bunyips haven't got you yet! Looks like you're having a great time, hope it continues and please get that tackle out and start using it....Its no good unless it gets nice and fishy! Get yourself to a wreckers for a alternator mate, should be able to get one at a fair price possible even reconditioned! Happy days Jason
30th September 2008

How's life
Everything allright down under? Not much going on on your blog for a few months now ("blogmoeheid"?) so i'm guessing you're having too much of a good time to waste any on fiddling with the laptop ;) Hope you enjoy spring more then we did summer this year. Happy traveling and all the best wishes.

Tot: 0.327s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.2672s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb