A DINGO DRANK OUR GOON: Fraser Island

Ok, I know. Once again I've gotten a little lazy with this blog. I have SO much to tell everyone, but I'll start with Spring Break. Yes, it is spring here.

To start off with:
Dingo = deceivingly adorable wild dog
Goon = boxed wine

Anyway, I traveled with Gina and our friend Jackie who goes to Wollongong University here in Australia. Our adventure started off a little rocky to say the least. We had plans to fly to Brisbane on Sept 24th then take a train to Maryborough then a bus to Hervey Bay where our first hostel was. The plans were solid with plenty of time between each transfer. So we got up at about 4am on the 24th (which was pretty rough since I was still recovering from a somewhat crazy 21st birthday, but I won't go into that here...) and we took the train to the airport only to find out that our flight to Brisbane was cancelled because of the dust storm.

Let me do a little side note about that dust storm. It was easily the most insane thing I have ever seen. From my apartment, I can see the Sydney Harbor, bridge, and opera house. Well, I can normally see them. But during the dust storm, everything was red/orange. We couldn't see the city. Dust from the Outback had actually blown all the way onto the east coast. It was apparently the biggest dust storm in like 70 years. Glad I got to see it, not so happy it messed up my travel plans, to say it nicely.

So, going back... Our flight got rerouted to Gold Coast (where we were planning on spending the second half of our break, but I will talk about in another post). Then we got on a bus to Brisbane (about an hour and a half). The train station was right outside the airport and right as we got there, of course, the train pulled out and left the station. Wonderful. So after a lot of discussion, we ended up taking the next train to Maryborough West but then we found out that there was no bus to Hervey Bay. So, we were in Maryborough West, essentially the middle of nowhere, for a few more hours until the next bus came. By the time we got to our hostel it was past 9pm. We left our apartment at like 4:30am. Talk about a long day of traveling. But we finally got there, so it was ok.

We got up early the next day for a meeting at the hostel. We were leaving from Hervey Bay to go to Fraser Island and go camping. At the meeting we got split into groups of 10 and Gina, Jackie and I were in quite the eccentric group. We had an awesome English guy, Matt, who was the only one we trusted with driving, three Japanese girls whose English was VERY limited, a German couple (simply referred to as "the couple") and a random Swiss guy who happened to speak German. First we went grocery shopping for the 3 days we were going to be camping. They gave us the option of getting this meat package with steaks, sausage, mince (ground beef), something I didn't recognize and therefore didn't eat, and lunch meat. (Most of that honestly went to waste). We got the basics, like bread and peanut butter, pasta, I don't really remember what else. The couple put long-life milk into our group basket. Seriously? Who drinks long-life milk? I think I can go 3 days without milk. And they got a shit ton of it. She also got "meat spread" which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It was ham and chicken ground up and put in one of those tubes (like the ones that slice and bake cookies are in) and you just open it and spread it on bread. I'm close to vomiting while writing about it, sorry. The Japanese girls got SO many snacks, chips, candy, cookies, etc; they were eating the whole time and it was annoying because we didn't have much room in the car. But it could have been worse. Anyway, after that adventure, we went over to this garage and loaded up the 4WD car with tents, sleeping bags, food, cooking equipment, random other camping stuff, etc. And then off to the ferry to Fraser Island.

Let me tell you a little bit about Fraser Island from an environmental background. It is one of the biggest sand islands in the world. Seriously, it is just sand. It is on the World Heritage List and after being there and a few other World Heritage places I have made it my life goal to go to as many as possible. The only method of transportation on the island is 4WD because of the loose sand. There are a bunch of beautiful fresh water lakes all over the island, and it is chock full of dingoes.

We had a pretty strict itinerary for the three days because our travel depended on the tide times. Driving through salt water was not an option and you could go significantly faster on the hard sand on the coast than the inland loose trails. The first day we got there we went to Lake Makenzie, an absolutely georgous freshwater lake.


That's me lounging in the lake. The water was such a perfect temperature, especially since it was really hot. We stayed there the entire day (which wasn't that long after we actually got to the island and then found the lake). We decided to leave before it was going to get too dark so we could set up camp and cook dinner.

The first night I didn't do as much setting up the tents as I did cooking dinner. But, we kind of started too late so we were cooking when it was really dark. Very difficult. But ultimately we succeeded and got to eat. After dinner, Gina, Jackie and I sat on the dune behind our camp and drank some goon and just enjoyed the beauty of the island. The three of us got up for a little and mistakenly left our cups out and when I turned around to go back there was a dingo drinking out of one of the cups! Basically I yelped because I was pretty terrified, more out of surprise than anything else. We didn't stay up much longer because the next day was starting pretty early.

We had to get up at like 6am on Saturday because of the tide times. It wasn't that difficult because the tents got real hot real early. We packed up the tents and the cars and started the day. First we drove down to the Maheno shipwreck and walked around for a little. We didn't really stay there too long because honestly, there wasn't too much there but some rusty metal. Then we headed to Lake Wabby. It was quite the hike there, and all sand. I was pretty exhausted by the time we got to the lake. The swim was very refreshing. The lake definitely wasn't as nice as Lake Makenzie, but it was definitely really cool still. There were so many fish in the lake swimming right where we were. The shore was so steep so it was pretty interesting when I fell asleep and legitimately started snoring. Whatever, I got like no sleep the night before. We headed back to the camp earlier than the day before becuase we didn't want to be cooking in the dark again. When we got back, I did less of the cooking and more of the tent setting up. Looking back, I probably should have participated in the cooking a little more because we ate the most overcooked pasta I have ever had in my life. It was borderline nasty. But, looking back to Hab4Hum'05, beggers can't be choosers. We drank a little more goon and sat on the beach, and luckily had no more experiences with dingoes. We did see other wildlife--WHALES! It was so cool! We saw humpback whales breaching. It was pretty far out so we couldn't see it too well, but they were definitely there. Jackie and I were sitting on the dune and Gina was standing near the water collecting shells. I yelled to Gina to try to get her to turn around and see the whales but she just got really concerned when she heard me yelling to her. She wouldn't turn around. Later she told me that she thought there was like a dingo about to attack her. Oops. Once again, we went to bed pretty early because we had to wake up early, and there wasn't really anything to do.

On Sunday we packed up the tents and headed all the way down to the tip of the island to Iron Head Rock. We climbed up to the top and from there we could see a bunch of dolphins and more whales. There was a huge school of fish moving around the shallow water around the rocks. The water was absolutely beautiful. After a bunch of pictures, we decided to go on our merry way. We had a few options for the rest of the day until we had to go back to the ferry. We decided to go back to Lake Makenzie for the rest of the day. We just hung out there until it was time to go back to the ferry, pretty much the perfect way to end our trip to Fraser Island.

Throughout this entire trip, we had some interesting experiences with the couple and the Japanese girls. First, the couple asked for the own personal tent and a double sleeping bag. Seriously? The tents took up so much space in the cars, there was no way we were getting another one. The guy at the hostel actually laughed at them when they asked that. The German guy always wanted to drive and it was incredibly uncomfortable when he did. It was very bumpy and we got airborn a few times in the back. We were really only comfortable with Matt driving, mainly because he was used to the whole, driving on the left side of the road thing. It was very amusing. The whole trip was a really good time.

When we got back to the hostel at Hervey Bay we were all really hungry so we decided to get dinner at this Irish pub a few blocks away. We ordered at the bar and then they gave you a little sign to put on your table. A lot of restaurants around here do that but most just have numbers on the sign. At this Irish pub, they had county names on the signs. I was hoping to get County Kerry in honor of a certain someone but we didn't. Sadness. We got County Waterford. That's not really important at all. Once again, we got to bed pretty early because we had a 5am bus back to Maryborough West and then the train back to Brisbane.

But, that's for another day and another post. Until then...

Cheers.