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Day 77 - Town of 1770 to Hervey Bay
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We got up at a reasonable hour, wolfed down some breakfast, checked-out and set off south again, headed for Hervey Bay, launch-pad for Fraser Island.
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 tracks, and the main road of the island is the east coast beach !!
For this reason the only vehicles allowed on the island are 4 wheeled drive jeeps and trail bikes. We booked a 4x4 yesterday, but when we arrived we needed to book a place on a car ferry, pick up the jeep, and stay one night before leaving 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 nice backpackers, 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.
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.
After lunch we had to take the car to the place where we've rented the 4x4 jeep from, which was in the middle of nowhere. We had to watch a video tutorial showing us how to drive a 4x4, and how to drive on the island. It sounded very dull, but it was actually very interesting.
The island itself looks pretty mental, the east beach is over 70 miles long, and it is like a sand highway, with hundreds of jeeps booting it down, to use an Als expression... Or as my old friend Jonny Nuggets would say "plenty good enough, give it some tut" !!!! (No-one except Ste will have any idea what I'm on about...)
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 in apparently.
Apparently the beach bit is easy (unless we hit some soft sand, or want to get off the beach), the really hard bit are the inland tracks.
These tracks look pretty rough work, only wide enough for one jeep, so if (when) we meet any other vehicles it could 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 and other early birds. 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 onto another lake, and then head to the resort where we stay the night.
The day after will be our day on the beach, as you have to be VERY careful with the tides. Tomorrow we have to be off the beach by 11:30am (not giving us much time, hence the inland adventure), but the high tide gets an hour later each day, so on Tuesday we can be on the beach until 12:30pm, much better !
So that will be when we rip up the beach to see a 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 enough time to get to a supermarket to fill up Emile, and get back to pick up our jeep after it was cleaned.
Katie was sad to swap our luxury executive car for a little jeep, especially when she started turning the wheel !!! No power steering here my darling !!!!
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.
So goodnight for now and 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
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