Day 77 - Town of 1770 to Hervey Bay
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
78
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Hervey Bay,
Australia
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island, yet most of its area is filled with tropical rainforest.
There are only minimal 'sealed' (tarmac) roads on the island, so 99% of the roads are bumpy dirt tracks, and the main road of the island is the east coast beach, which is about 70 miles long!
For this reason the only vehicles allowed on the island are 4 wheel drive jeeps and trail bikes. We booked a 4x4 over the phone yesterday, but when we arrived in town we also needed to book a place on a car ferry, pick up the jeep, and stay the night before leaving for the island early the next morning.
The road down to Hervey Bay was more interesting than our previous jaunt to 1770, and the sun slowly fought off the clouds to beat down on a few occassions.
We arrived at Hervey Bay at about 4pm, whizzed down to the ferry office (technically it's a "barge"), despaired at the news that the only barge available left at 7:30am, and sped into town to get our night's accommodation sorted.
Hervey Bay is about 30 mins away from where the barge leaves from, and it's a lovely little town. It has an Esplanade that runs (unsurprisingly) along the beach, and it's full of cool backpacker hostels, hotels, fish & chip shops, other restaurants and bars.
Maybe it's the fact that we've been prevented from seeing the sun for a few days (the weather here recently has been bloody awful), because EVERYTHING looks better in the sun I guess!
We called around a few backpackers, and the one we decided on is in a great location, 2 mins walk from the beach, and it seems lovely. It's really quite large, and has loads of facilities, it's probably the pick of the bunch so far in Oz.
The only problem is no air-con in our (very large) room, but we should be ok, maybe we'll have to leave the fridge open or something ;)
After checking-in and dragging our bags to the room, Katie talked me into fish & chips for lunch (not difficult!), and we walked over the road to a picnic table by the beach.
Again we had the whole beach to ourselves, I could get used to this...
After lunch we had to take the car to the place where we rented the 4x4 jeep from, which was in the middle of nowhere.
On arrival we had to watch a video tutorial showing us how to drive a 4x4, and how to drive on the island. It probably sounds very dull, but it was actually pretty interesting.
The island itself looks pretty mental, as I said earlier the east beach is over 70 miles long, and it is like a sand highway, with hundreds of jeeps 'booting it down', to borrow an expression from my mate Als...
There are also a number of freshwater lakes in the middle of the island which look quite special, with bright blue water & bright white sand, perfect for swimming apparently.
We were told that driving on the beach is dead easy (unless we hit some soft sand, or want to get off the beach!), but that the really hard bit are the inland tracks.
These tracks look pretty rough work, only wide enough for one jeep, so if (when) you meet another other vehicles it will get interesting!
The weather tomorrow looks ok (touch wood), so we're going to try to head straight for the most famous lake to try and beat the day tours. We hope to chill there for an hour or so, and then drive to a place where we can do a walk through the rainforest, then drive to another lake, and then head to the resort where we're stay the night in a hotel.
The day after that will be our day on the beach, where you have to be REALLY careful with the tides, otherwise you can get stuck on the beach & end up buying them a new jeep!
Tomorrow we would have to be off the beach by 11:30am (which doesn't give us much time, hence our inland lake visits), but the high tide gets an hour later each day, so on Tuesday we can be on the beach until 12:30pm, which is much better.
We can't wait to rip up the beach and see the famous ship-wreck, swim in a famous creek, and hopefully not get stuck on the famous sand dunes!
Anyway, that's leaping into the future...
After the safety briefing (the bloke was a bit of a legend), and filling out all the paperwork, we had just enough time to get to a supermarket to fill up Emile, and get back to pick up our jeep after it had been cleaned.
Katie was sad to swap our luxury executive car for a little jeep, especially when she started turning the wheel with a total lack of power steering!
After the car swap we headed back to the hostel, made some dinner, then popped over the road to watch the sunset on the beach, which was pretty cool.
I'll update this again when we get back from Fraser Island and head down to Noosa, the jewel of the Sunshine Coast....
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
