After leaving Kroombit, we all jumped back onto the Oz bus with our driver; Nipples, they all have weird names, but don't tell us why they are called them..... So far I have met Nipples, Trucker and Coaster; I been told Disco is a cool dude to travel with, so hopefully I will meet him on my next bus adventure! Anyways, after 11 hours of traveling, we arrived at Rainbow Beach!
So Rainbow Beach is a really exciting coastal town........ It has a population of around a 1000 people, but I never even saw that many people, so its a very small place! It basically has a small high street, a supermarket and a beach (which was pretty awesome; although the beach was covered with dead jellyfish, which you have to dodge as they can still sting ya, even when they’re dead!). Although not many people are residents in Rainbow, there are up to 10,000 people visiting each day (I've been told, not sure that fact is true.....) This is mainly because people stop at Rainbow beach to head to Fraser Island! I spent around 4 days in Rainbow beach and by the end of it was going crazy, as there isn't much to do; which really highlighted to me that I'm a city guy!
On Wednesday, surprise surprise we had to get up at 5.30am, which was painful; but it was to go and feed wild dolphins, which is deffo worth getting up for! We caught a ferry and went to Tin Can Bay. The dolphins we feed were humpback dolphins and there was a pod (family) of ten dolphins living in the area, and we meet two of the pod. I was given a dead fish (NICE) and then went down to the water, where it was shallow, and then held out my hand with the dead fish, and gave the dolphin its brekky! It was soo awesome to be able to feed a wild dolphin (another thing ticked off the list). Although it was strange seeing the dolphins, as they didn't look real to me, it was a surreal, but magnificent sight. The pack leader of this pod, I managed feed, and he actually had lots of scars on him. This is because other dolphins pass through the waters where this pod lives, and they can get very territorial, and thus get into fights, which surprised me slightly as dolphins are usually very gentle creatures. But all in all, awesome times; now I’ve just got to swim with some!
So, when we booked our tour for Fraser Island, we did a package with the Whitsundays as well, so we got it pretty cheap (yay); but what I didn't know until we arrived at our briefing, the day before we set off, was that we were going camping!!! This was a bit of a surprise for me, as I assumed (never a good thing to do) that we would be staying in a hostel. So, I’m not really a camping person, I like my home comforts and having showers, which we didn't get for 3 days over there. So after getting over that shock (ha) we were told more about what we were doing. We were put into groups of 8 and were given a 4w4, all our camping equipment and food to cook for the next three days. Everyone who had a driver's license could drive the 4w4, I decided not too, unfortunately, :( as I haven’t driven for nearly 4 years, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea driving a 4w4 for the first time, on the beach, with 7 other people's lives in my hand, ha!). So we were exploring the island for the next three days by 4w4, with a guide taking us to all the cool places. To travel around the island traveling involved driving on the beach, super awesome (even if I wasn't).
But before I continue, I should really tell you more about Fraser Island!!! So Fraser Island is located south of Brisbane, and is the largest sand island in the world; at 1840km squared. It has rainforests, lots of beaches/bays, sand dunes, swamps, freshwater lakes, and coastal heaths. It's a very beautiful place, as it is touched very little by humans, so it's a very natural/beautiful place; unspoiled by mankind’s interferences basically.
So after traveling in a 4w4 for the first time; it's very bumpy in the back, going over lots of uneven surfaces, dips and rocky hills! And many times jolting out of my seat and hitting my head on the roof, (fun times), we caught a ferry, and headed over to Fraser Island. Once we arrived we drove along the beach (just awesome) and then arrived at our camp. So this was the next shock; we weren't camping on ground or grass, but sand!!!!! Oh dear! So after getting over that shock, we started to set up camp, and attempted to put up are tents, and somehow make them stay up in the sand! Which actually didn't turn out to be too difficult, even for a novice like me! Ha!
With camp now set up we got back into our jeeps, and headed over to Indian Head summit. To get to the top of Indian we had to walk up a tricky rocky cliff climb (very difficult in thongs). This was at the north point of the island, and looks over at a 75km beach and the sea, a beautiful sight in the sun. This headland was also named by Captain Cook, when he passed it in May 1770, because of the aboriginal people he saw there. As we looked out to the sea, we were very LUCKY to see: a wild dolphin, some turtles; and wait for it........ a humpback whale!!!!! We saw the whale from quite a distance, but it was still an amazing sight, seeing the size of the whale, huge, and the power it had, when it crashed waves with its body, wicked cool stuff!!!
After that great experience, we headed back to camp before it got dark, and the tide got too high, otherwise we wouldn't be able to drive on the beach; and would have been stranded :O. We then had dinner, the food we were given for the trip was actually pretty good! The first night we had steak, my favorite, medium rare, yummers! I cooked the first night and it was pretty fun to cook camping style I must say, even if it was very sandy. So; about the sand, it was a bit of a nightmare, I mean I've always hated sand, since like forever, so going to the biggest sand island probably wasn't the best idea, ha! Anyways the darn sand gets everywhere, in your food (it gives the food a nice crunch texture) your ears, hair, toenails, fingers nails, in your pants and lots of really not fun places (you know what I mean), in my sleeping bag, all over my clothes, in my camera (bad times) just EVERYWHERE!! There was no escaping the evil stuff, ha! Which really added to the camping experience……
After dinner, everyone in our camp, got on the goon, and drank the night away socialising and getting to know each other. Our little group then headed to the beach, and chilled out in the darkness, and looked up to the sky, and stared at the stars, so cool; if only I knew more about constellations. So my first nights sleep was interesting, as we didn’t have any sleeping mats, so we were basically sleeping on hard, uneven sand (nice and comfortable). I woke up the next day feeling really refreshed…. with a really sore back and shoulders……. lol! But it’s all part of the experience, I guess!
After getting up, or should I say woken up at 6am by our guide, we had brekky (scrambled eggs and toast with orange juice; a good way to start the day) and then got back into our 4w4s to visit the next natural sight on the island; Lake McKenzie. Lake McKenzie is the most visited site of the island, and no wonder why, it is a truly beautiful and secluded place! The lake is only made up from rainwater, so when I swam in it (it was very cold) the water was so fresh, it was such a refreshing swim, in a beautiful setting with a beach, and a forest surrounding the rest of the lake, wow! The lake had tints of blue and green, which was a great sight, just a really amazing place.
After that we headed onto Eli Creek, which is the largest freshwater stream on the island! I swam from the mouth of the creek to the end, also very cold, but pretty cool. There was also a boardwalk along the creek and through the trees; looking onto and over the creek which was brill. It was a very chilled out place, I felt very at peace here, and there was less sand, which was a bonus!
After our day of sightseeing on the island, we headed back to our camp to have dinner! That night was a very interesting experience; to say the least…. Our guide said there was a chance it would rain during the night, so our group erected a plastic sheet covering all our tents to keep us rain free. As we all began to head to bed (on our sand mattresses) it started to rain lightly, and continued on most of the night, but I thought little of it, till later….. It was about 1am and I was fast asleep, dreaming happy thoughts, when I was suddenly awoken by a howling wind and my tent shaking!!! I was meant to be sharing my tent with Matt, but he never returned…… (I found out later that he was so drunk he passed out in the jeep!). So I was by myself, when the wind started to get really strong and the rain pelted my tent! I actually thought my tent was going to blow away, so I had to sit up and literally hold my tent up, parts of it had already started to collapse! So I had to be strong and keep it up against the howling wind and drenching of the rain! Ha! As all this was happening, all the girls in one of the next door tents were screaming, as our make-shift roof had collapsed and gone onto their tent! Causing their tent to leak and they got soaked, so they had to run out, find the jeep; and then spend the rest of the night in the cramped back of the 4w4!!! As well as this, some Irish guys who were rather drunk; hadn’t set there tent up correctly, and it blew away with half of their stuff it in!! So I managed to brave the storm, and keep my tent up by myself, whilst other people’s tent had blown away or leaked; so I was a lucky guy under the circumstances! It was a pretty eventful night and a fun experience, I have to say! It’s cool to say I’ve camped at Fraser Island, AND that I have survived a pretty big storm! All you could do during the storm was laugh anyway, not that I could really hear other people, as the wind was so powerful!
Another thing Fraser Island is very famous for is; dingoes!!! Which are wild dogs, very cute, but dangerous! They have attacked quite a lot of people on the island before, so we had to be on our guard. At our briefing, we were told that we would be guaranteed to see lots of dingoes, and we really did! One of the girls of our group, didn’t have a torch, so I helped her go back to her tent, when we arrived, her tent was shaking and moving a lot! We were like OKAY, what’s going on?! Suddenly a wild dingo jumped out, with its mouth full of food, it had found in the tent! It was the first dingo I saw, so we both got a bit of a shock; I hadn’t expect them to come right into camp. The following days, there were all around our camp, in search of food scraps. It’s very bad to feed the dingoes, as they will keep coming back for more, and if you don’t continue to feed them, they become aggressive. Many dingoes have to be killed each year, for coming into contact too much with people, and becoming a danger to visitors. These dingoes are also some of the last pure breed wild dingoes in eastern Oz, there are only thought to be 120 or so, left on the island. Once a boy wandered off by himself on the island, and was found dead, the dingoes mauled him to death, so on the island, your never meant to go anywhere by yourself! Especially at night when they are more active; or you may never been seen again! So that deffo added to the camping experience.
On our last day, we went to Lake Wabby, which is in the middle of the island. The lake is rather small, but gorgeous and surrounded by steep sand dunes, and just huge areas of sand, if felt like a desert; which was
just such a magical sight. This was probably my favorite place on Fraser, as it was just so different to what I had seen before.
So after 3 days and 2 days nights of camping, we had finished our time at Fraser, and what an eventful three days it had been! And it was a really great experience to have (despite my moaning, lol), and with such great people and such awe inspiring landscape! But when we got back to a hostel, it felt like a luxury, my own bed, with a mattress, a shower and sand free! Although it took a few days till, I was totally free of sand from my body and clothes, ha! But it’s another thing ticked off the list, but still plenty more to go!!!
Until next time,
Angus x
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