Queensland

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Our journey from Airlie beach to Hervey Bay is a 16 hour drive so Oz Experience break it up by taking us to Kroombit for the night which is a tourist cattle station in the middle of nowhere! We arrived late and it was still raining so it was very muddy. We had to wheel our bags through the mud to our dorm room, yuck! We were given dinner and then they explained a bit about the cattle station's history. They told us a story about a plane crash that occurred in 1945 but was never found. In 1994 it was discovered unintentionally by a local farmer on Kroombit's land. The owners of Kroombit had never even found it although they did walk 300m past it 3 days before it was found! This emphasises how large the outback is. The entertainment for the evening was as follows, we were taught how to crack a whip, quite easy once you get the technique, we both managed to do it. We then went on a mechanical bull!! It was hilarious watching everyone trying their hardest to stay on. The first girl flew straight off as soon as it started moving! Laura lasted 34 bucks first time and longer the second. Stephanie stayed on until it started spinning as well as bucking. We played a few other games before going to bed. The next morning there was an opportunity to go horse riding and pigeon shooting but we decided to save our money. Instead we were taught how to throw a boomerang and lasoo! We also watched some goat mustering. All in all it was an enjoyable stay and we got to take part or witness many new activities!

Later that day we arrived at Hervey Bay before going to Fraser Island the next day for our jeep safari. We had to be ready for 6.30am for the briefing and put into our groups. Someone described the briefing as like being on Big Brother, as we had to make a shopping list and nominate two people to go to the shop, and then two others to go get the alcohol! We were grouped with five Irish people and two Dutch girls. The jeep was provided with everything we needed for the next three days, after loading the roof and getting the shopping we set off for the barge to Fraser Island. The crossing took about half an hour and once there we set off along the bumpy roads to explore the island. On our first day we were quite time restricted due to tide times and having to drive on the beach for part of the day. However, we still managed to see Lake McKenzie, which is one of the top ten beaches in the world. Then on our way to the campsite we passed some coloured sand cliffs, a shipwreck of a ship called Mehano which wrecked on the Eastern beach of Fraser in 1935.

The campsite had pretty much everything we needed, hot showers, toilets and cooking area including BBQ and a stove and a shop. We pitched out tents and made home for the next few days. The first night we had a BBQ for dinner with plenty of chicken, steak, sausages, burgers and salads, it was quite a spread! The following day we set off at 7.30am and our first destination was Indian Head and the Champagne Pools. Indian Head is a headland with fantastic views of the island, and the Champagne Pools are aptly named because the waves crash over into rock pools and bubbles like Champagne. From there we drove to Lake Wabby, which is next to an enormous sand dune. It took quite a while to get there and we encountered some pretty hair raising tracks!! At one point we had to move a fallen tree out of the way so we could drive on! On the third day we went to Lake Birrabean, which looked a lot like Lake McKenzie, from here we went back to Lake McKenzie and spent 3 hours sunbathing and chilling out before we had to go to the Barge back to Hervey Bay. We really enjoyed our time on Fraser Island, definitely the best thing we have done in Oz so far and the Irish humour was brilliant!!

We spent another night at Hervey Bay and a day relaxing before jumping back on the bus to Rainbow Beach. This is another gateway to Fraser Island and the smallest town we have been to so far. It consisted of one street! We had a relaxing time here but did have to be ready at 7.00am to go and feed a dolphin named Mystique who lives in the rivers and estuaries around Tin Can Bay. He is quite a famous dolphin to the area and the third generation of his family to come up to the harbour each morning to get a feed and say hello to the locals and tourists! It is quite a Flipper story in that once he was attacked by a shark and swam back to the bay where the locals nursed him back to health! That evening at Rainbow we took part in a quiz and did badly (again)!

From Rainbow we moved onto Brisbane, a city at last!! We stayed there for two nights and our hostel was brilliant, right in the centre of the city. We enjoyed exploring a city and went to city hall which included a trip up the clock tower, and the Museum of Brisbane. We also explored the Botanic Gardens and managed to stumble across the Queensland University of Technology, which had a lovely campus. We spent a few hours at the lagoon on the South Bank, a popular place to go and swim. We enjoyed wandering around the shops in Queen Street Mall although we had no money to spend!! We spent an evening at the cinema and saw the Jane Austen Book Club, it was a good film. The second night we ended up playing drinking games with two guys that were staying in our dorm. We had a really great time in Brisbane and this makes us even more excited about getting to Sydney.

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