Advertisement
Published: July 20th 2010
Edit Blog Post
As I mentioned in my previous blog, our next stop in Oz was Surfers Paradise where we stayed for 3 nights. Now, I could spend a couple of paragraphs explaining what we did, but since the next couple of stops afterwards are much more interesting I will simply sum up our goings on in one easy sentence. Beach, goon, clubs and repeat. Don't get me wrong, it was a good laugh since we met up with a load of guys we met in Byron and went out with them each night but the city just reminded me of your standard clubbing city somewhere in Greece. I will quickly mention the awesome fun we had zorbing, which if you don't know is basically rolling down a hill in a huge inflatable ball with a little bit of water in it. Also the incredible pancakes we had after the second night in an all you can eat pancake house. Pancakes, cream, jam, sugar and lemon are a pretty dam good hangover cure for future reference.
The journey to our stop at Hervey Bay was also a long journey and even now we have failed to learn about drinking lightly before travelling since
we did a back to back bar crawl the night before starting and 5 and finishing at 2... Never the less, we continued on our journey driven by a driver who was named Ute after the utility cars all over Australia which usually have a pointless V8 engine with them. We stopped briefly at a look out point among the Glass Mountains which had an aboriginal story behind it about the three main mountains who were a father, pregnant wife and son who all turned into the mountains after the boy brought shame to the family by failing to help his mother when a giant wave hit their village and instead turned and ran away. Heavy stuff.
We arrived at Rainbow Beach in the early evening where we dropped off Will and Sam and stopped ourselves for some dinner before taking a bus to Hervey Bay to begin our Fraser Island trip. We checked in and spent some time trying to decide what to take as we wern't allowed to have our main bags in the 4x4s we would be driving.
The next morning we got up for our free breakfast and a brief talk about safety on the
island where we also met the other three people who would be in our 4x4. Chris and Jamie were our drivers since they were the only ones over 21 which was a shame because I would have loved to have driven through the island myself. The third was Alex who was from Holland and didn't believe that my surname was dutch, thinking that it was from Germany instead the bastard! We were given a list of common shopping items to take since we had to buy all our food for the next three days before we left, and Sophie and Becky were put in charge of going to the supermarket with 3 girls from the other 4x4 to get all the food (completely unintentional that all the girls did the shopping by the way). While they went out shopping, we were put in charge of choosing booze to bring along and like true backpackers we chose to take plenty of goon! Once the girls were back we packed up the 4x4 and headed out to the ferry port with our guide called Nathan who was a very funny bloke and typically Australian. Loved to drink, loved to swear.
Once we
had arrived on Fraser Island we got our first experience of true off roading through a rainforest to an area called Central Station where we stopped briefly and walked along a boardwalk through the forest. Running next to the boardwalk was a stream containing the most crystal clear and uncontaminated water I have ever seen. I couldn't even get a picture of the water it was that clear, you can just see the sand underneath. We continued on our journey out of the rainforest to the east side of the island where we stopped to have an amazing ham, cheese, cucumber, lettuce and crisp sandwich before heading out onto the beach. Even though I wasn't driving, it was still awesome to be driving along a beach at 60kph, though hitting bumps at that speed wasn't fun when you smacked your head on the roof. After a while we pulled up to check out a wreck that has been washed up on Fraser Island since the 1930s. The wreck is of a ship called the Maheno which was used by the Australian navy as target practise during WWII so now there isn't much of a ship left, but it made for
some wicked photos, especially with the overcast cloud and beach. Further up the coast was Eli Creek where we first saw the day tour buses driving across the stream with the most ridiculous wheels and suspension on them. There were also small propelor planes landing right by the shore line which I thought was quite impressive. As the day came to an end we headed to our camp site for a bbq and some goon with the guys from the other 4x4 where we were introduced to two drinking games called 'pyramid' and 'on the bus' which I will be taking straight to uni because they are awesome! That night I came very close to having a tarantula in my face as well after it dropped down from the wooden beams of the communal area in an attempt to pounce on a large moth that was hovering around the light.
Next morning we grabbed ourselves a quick breakfast before heading back out onto the beach and up the coast. Our first stop was at the Pinnacle Rocks which were tall, pointed sedimentary rocks with an orange colour to them. Interesting for a few minutes but we had plenty more
to come so we headed on. Further up the beach we stopped off and headed up the top of a cliff named Indian Head which looked out over the sea and the island behind the dunes. On the way up Alex scored some signal on his phone and learned of the news that Holland beat Brazil which was pretty awesome, but not to overshadow the incredible view from the tip of the cliff looking over the island. From that point I could see miles of sand dunes, long sandy beaches and even managed to spot a sea turtle and manta ray down below. Happy days! Excitement didn't stop there because as soon as we got down to the beach and continued on our way, we spotted whales just off shore which have apparently migrated up the coast to teach their young how to fend of predators by rolling and splashing their tales on the surface of the water. Slowly but surely we made it to our final stop at the Champagne Pools, so named because they are a group of large rock pools that get filled with the white foamy water created by the breaking waves. Here we stopped for
lunch while waiting to the low tide in order to head back down the beach to the camp site.
Once we arrived back at the camp we pretty much did the same as last night except this time our camp was full of dingos sitting around. One of them even attempted to steal Alex's shorts which we had to rescue from them, though they still made off with his belt as Im told they are attracted to leather. Once that ordeal was over we headed down to the beach to check out the stars. Being in a place were there is 0 light polution and no cloud in the sky made for one hell of a beautiful night sky as well as it being pretty warm which was rad!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0452s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Fraser Island 4wd
non-member comment
Fraser Island Tours
Star-watching in Fraser is real superb! As for the dingoes, I hope that would be the last belt they'd take from your group :-) Weather is in winter - the best time to tour the area.