So, after Noosa Heads we went to Rainbow Beach for a couple of nights. More for the name to be honest as it sounds like a pretty cool place, doesn't it? However, it is not really quite exciting as it sounds!! We did have a nice walk along the black and gold beach though with the 'colourful' cliff edges as the back drop. We also walked over some big sand dunes which were pretty cool and saw lots of weird shaped black rocks and jelly fish. We had a quiet few days here as James wasn't feeling too great and we knew the next few days were going to be a bit manic on Fraser and the Whitsunday islands.
The thing that stands out for me here though was that one night we went out for a really nice cheap pizza in a local restaurant and I could not eat all mine so I took it back to the hostel with me. I came downstairs the next day with a big smile on my face ready to tuck into my nice, delicious pizza to find out some little git had stolen it. GET YOUR OWN PIZZA YOU THIEF!!! I nearly reported it to the Police as theft I was that annoyed but thought that might be taking it a little too far!
So the next place we visited was Hervey Bay ready for our Fraser Island trip. Now, possibly the funniest moment of the trip so far happened here and it involved James and a flipflop or shall we say 'thong' as they call them in Australia! Basically we had just got off the coach at the coach terminal in torrential rain, got our bags from the luggage holder, and had began to make our way across the car park to our hostel shuttle bus when it happened! (Imagine James with a huge backpack on his back and one on his front with another bag over his shoulder) He slipped on the wet car park and fell forward onto his stomach on all fours in front of the whole coach load of people! But the bit that made it so funny was that he couldn't get up because he had too many bags everywhere and the big,heavy backpack that he had on his back was weighing him down so every time he went to get up, he would fall back down again. He looked like a turtle as his head just kept poking out of a mass of bags every so often as he tried to make it up!! All his weight was on his elbows as that was what he had fallen on and he didn't have enough strength in his elbows to push himself fully up. Therefore he had no choice but to let himself completely flop down to the ground so that his hands were flat to the ground so he could then push himself back up! To be fair on him he laughed it off but he and I both know that wouldn't have been the case if we were at home! He said he could hardly look really pissed off because there was a coach load of people watching him! Instead he had to casually laugh it off and anyone who knows James will know that this absolutely killed him!!
After a welcome meeting the night before, we headed down to the meeting place at 6.45am to pack the jeeps up for our trip to Fraser Island. It literally rained for the whole three days and two nights that we were on the island!! Driving on the sand was so much fun, but you are flung around a lot! This makes the journey's much more exciting though. I felt comfortable driving as well because Laurence who was in our jeep had done the trip before and owns a farm so he knows exactly how to drive on four wheel drive on sand! He was on the island with his wife Amanda and they were on their honeymoon which I thought was pretty cool!!
Anyway, James and I both drove the jeeps at different points over the trip and neither of us managed to get stuck in the sand so that was good! Unfortunately the island and the places we visited on the island didn't look as pretty as it should have done due to the weather which was a bit annoying, but after we had all got over the fact that it was going to rain the whole time we still had a really good trip, met loads of good people and made the most of the trip anyway! I did moan about the weather a bit though because being continually wet for three days gets a little bit boring after a while!! Having said that we were lucky as we had booked to stay in an actual camp on the island that is permanent and because we knew it was going to rain we were all able to upgrade to a bed. We spoke to a few people that had gone with a tour where you had to put your own tent up, go to the toilet on the beach, have no warm shower etc... and they said they had a pretty bad time of it so we didn't really have anything to moan about!!
So, our first stop on the island was Tony our guides favorite lake on the island and it was pretty special, we all just jumped into the lake in the rain and played volleyball. You can also use the sand at the bottom of the lake to clean you're jewellery and it really is a good cleaner so all of us girls had a good clean. We then drove to a second lake that had really steep sand dunes leading down to it. This was also very picturesque but again it was raining. After this we went back to camp, ate spag bowl cooked by Jens (which was really good) considering how little ingredients he had and then had a few drinks and played cards all evening with the group! Suprise suprise we played ring of fire group and guess who lost, yes that right I did so I had to drink the 'ming' juice and my god it was hideous, I did it and took one for the team though!
The next day we went to Indian Head viewing point and the champagne pools first! We actually had sunshine while we were in the pools so this was good! Although it was very windy so the sea kept smashing into the rocks but this made it great to watch! We then went back to camp for lunch before visiting Eli Creek, the shipwreck on the island and the famous black lake which had small little turtles poking their heads out of the water before we got in! Very cute! We then spent the evening having a bbq, playing cards and again having a few drinks! I forgot to mention that Fraser Island is where you find Dingoes which if you don't know are wild dogs and they tell you to stay away from them as they can be very dangerous. We had a family of them that lived in the camp so every time you went to the toilet or somewhere when it was dark you had to take a torch and a stick to bat them away with. Well, on the last night I needed the toilet at about 3am in the morning so I woke James up, as you weren't allowed to go on your own, and we headed for the 2 minute walk to the toilet! We went without a stick and a torch as we couldn't find one, well that was a silly idea as we ended up getting cornered by a bloody Dingo!! I panicked and started to run and they say this is the worst thing you can do as the dog will chase you thinking you are playing a game!! James shouted to me to stop running so I slowed down and jumped into someone else's camp! It was looking at us as if to say 'come on then' so James and I just briskly walked passed him making lots if noise (as that is supposed to scare them) to the toilet checking over our shoulder to make sure it wasn't following us!! I grabbed a mop from the toilet thinking I was going to have to bat it away on our return to the bed but he had obviously got bored and wandered off! Stupid blooming Dingo scared the life out of me!!
On the last morning we went to Lake Mackenzie and did a rainforest walk. Lake Mackenzie was very pretty but it just wasn't quite what we had expected due to the weather!! It was still a great place to take some really nice photographs though! We then got the ferry back and I am not even joking when I say the minute we got on the ferry the sun came out!!
All in all though we had a great trip, the island is truly a beautiful place we just didn't see it at its best! The driving on the island was amazing though and the whole experience was a great one. We had a really nice group of people and have kept in touch with a lot of them so this was a bonus!! The evening that we returned to Hervey Bay, we all went to the pub for something to eat to have a little reunion, even though we had only left each other about 2 hours before!!
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