Fraser Island Day 1

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Sunday 21st January 2006
We met with our group (8 others??) at 8am to go over the vehicle and cover andy previous dents etc. There were only three people eligible to drive in our group, me, Lisa and Bas/Bos He went first and drove us to the supermarket where 10 of us organised food for 3 days for a fantastic $10 a person! We also picked up some wine and beer and drove torwards the ferry. There were two other pink Land Cruisers from our hostel and we spotted another three white ones doing the same. SO there would be at least 60 of us heading to the island that day.

We were given a suggested itinery with times to get on and off the beach (to avoid getting stuck at high tide) and with the many ways to loose our $1000AUD bond it seemed like a good idea to follow the siggestion.

We got onthe barge after picking up our tickets from the office. The other two groups fro our hostel forget to pick theirs up and the barge had to wait while they jumped back off.

When we got to the Island we had to engage 4x4 - only a few hundred metres of tarmac onthe shole island. The rest is either beach driving or sandy inland track - the whole island is one huge sand dune - the biggest in the world.

We al went to central station to get water and then headed out towards Eurong, a few miles up the beach. The first of our group vehicles rolledof the tarmac into the sand and got stuck inthe first few meters - totally blocking beach access to and from Central Station! A vehicle coming the other way just watched and beeped and they all piled out and tried to dig it free. To make it worse it started really chucking it down with rain! What a terrible start - I felt so sorry for the driver! SOmeone had to come and winch them out - all as we sat in our vehicle watching and laughing!

I found out later the same group also broke their key and had to get a spare (hidden on the vehicle) - bad start!

We drove inland and parked up. We then walked 35 minutes (spotting some HUGE spiders one th way) to the very green Lake Wabby for a swim to cool down. Soon realised Fraser Island is plagued with flies, especially some enourmous biting flies (march flies), bigger than our horse flies and very stupid but also very hard! They are easy to hit, but usually get up and fly off again - even when stood on!

We drove back on to the beach and headed north, stopping to admire the Mahino shipwreck. A bit further up we pulled off the beach and on to the dunes to set up camp for the night. We put up our tents, had a BBQ and then played shovel-ball (Rounders with a shovel).

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Photos

Our Land Cruiser 4x4
Really cool to drive!

Comments

[Em]

Shovels?
ooh - shovel ball... did you not have egg on a spade? The potential of shovels (or spades) is really understimated...

[J2NZ]

LOL No eggs! :-(
Knew there was something I had missed off the grocery list for Fraser!! Doh! It was a shovel for digging and covering our pooh hole though - so not as hygenic as the spade I used for the egg cooking in Scotland.

[Nige]

Egg on a Shovel
I know eggonaspade is traditional, but I do feel that eggonashovel would be acceptable given the conditions (provided it hadn't already seen 'latrine duties') :-)