Rainbow beach and Fraser Island

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We arrived at rainbow beach on Thurday 21st of January. There wasn’t much here, its really just a stop of for people to get to fraser island. We stayed at fraser on rainbow hostel, we got two nights free accomadtion here. This was top of the list for the worst hostels we’ve stayed in. It was old and the rooms were tiny with just one crappy fan (no air-con), there wasn’t even room to put your rucksack on the ground and it was a 8bed dorm. But by the time we came back from camping the rooms were such a luxury, I then realised theres always something worse, or somebody worse of than you.

Friday morning at 4.30am we woke and got showers (this would be my last opportunity to have a shower in the next 3days). We met our groups at 5.30am. There was 3 4x4 jeeps and 3 groups of 9. We all said hello and loaded the top of the jeep with food, drink, tents and bags. We got a briefing of the mechanics on how to drive the 4x4, what to do if your stuck in the sand and a few horror stories to make us drive more careful (turns out they weren’t making the stories up, over that weekend two jeeps from a different group flipped over, 2people were injured, I could of so easily happened). 7.30am we were on the Ferry headed to Fraser island. We got off and were straight onto the each were we drove for about an hour. Sounds lovely, but i was terrified!! We had to get to our destination for a certain time or else the tide would come in and sweep us away (I saw pictures of floating jeeps!!), we couldn’t drive to close to the water because if we got stuck we’d start sinking, and we couldn’t drive in the soft sand because the jeep would get stuck, or to stop it getting stuck you had to drive as fast as you possibly can (it didn’t go that fast in the soft sand), but it slide from side to side like driving on ice!!! I got used to it and even drove on the beach when i realised that this was our main route to get from one location to the next.
Our first destination was lake mckenzie, I believe i found paradise, this was absolutely amazing!! The lake had 3different shades of blue, each shade was when the water got deeper. It was just gorgeous!! We had a laugh and stayed here for a while, then we all had lunch - salad sambo’s! Later on before it got dark we set up camp for the night, there was 27of us, 9 tents, it was such a great laugh that night! Ste and Martin cooked yummy burgers and we had a few drinks (and the rest!!). That night we had loads of visitors called dingo’s (wild dogs)!! The first one i saw I ran and jumped into the jeep locking all the doors! Im not afraid of dogs, but these are wild and aggressive! Then after the next on and the next and a few more glasses of wine, i was grand, after all there was 27 of us and only 2 or 3 off them at a time (they seem to travel in packs). At one stage we were singing “there was a farmer who had a dog and dingo was his namo D-I-N-G-O.....” ste shone the torch behind us and there was 3dingos right behind us, it was so so funny, haha, well it was a laugh or cry situation!! It was rough sleeping in a small tent with 3people, and the sand is not as comfortable as i hoped!! At 3.30am i woke up, the sound of the waves seemed so loud and I was sure i sound of the tents blowing in the wind were dingos scratching, thank god it wasn’t!! Ste got up to go to the toilet and I jumped to go with him, the thoughts of peeing in a bush in the pitch dark with dingos sniffing around didn’t appeal to me!

Wake up was 4.30am to pack up and hit the beach before the tide came in. Our next destination was Indian head, from here you could see amazing sights of the sea, we saw huge sting ray, there were sharks and all sorts in there too but unfortunately we didn’t see any. We had a lovely fry (thanks to the lads again) on the beach and headed on a 40minute walk along the beach (our jeep wasn’t aloud drive there because the sand was too soft) in the blistering heat to the chamange pools, these are naturally made little pools in the middle of the rocks were you could safely get in for a swim. Although we lived on the beach, we wern’t aloud in the sea due to sharks and sting ray and jelly fish (the jelly were washed up everywere you looked). So it was so refreshing when we got to a lake). We set up camp again, and made dinner. We had a great laugh tonight, i think the music from the ipod (plugged into the jeep) kept the dingo’s away cause we had no visitors that we could see anyway. It was amazing to hear the waves crashing, there is nothing else around, its pitch dark and the sky covered with more stars than i’ve ever seen in my life!!! A few songs and glasses of goon (wine) later, it was time to go to bed!!

It was an early start again, after we watched the sun rise (that was gorgeous), we packed up our stuff and went to our last destination which was lake wabby. This was just like a big lake at the bottom of a massive sand dune, you could run down the sand dune or roll and land straight in the water. This was fun but short lived cause we had to get back to the ferry for midday. The poor girls jeep broke down so many times, they eventually had to get a mechanic to come out and tow them, but there jeep was a WHOLE other story, on the reg its name was DZI (dizzy) and there was a reason for that! The sight of a bed (no matter how crappy or small the room was) was like a dream, and thoughts of a shower ade me the happiest girl ever, it was the best shower, myself and ste were FILTHY!! As routinee we all had to have an after party so we grabbed our goon and beer and headed to the beach untill 3.00am,it was a great night! Everyone got along so well (well apart from 3certain people, but it was there loss), I really enjoyed the trip and made great friends!!

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