Fraser Island

Trip Start Sep 12, 2005
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Trip End Aug 15, 2006


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Tuesday, April 4, 2006

We rolled into Hervey Bay in our Telstar about 2 hours from the Sunshine Coast. Hervey Bay is the launch pad for Fraser Island which sits just off the coast. Fraser is the biggest sand island in the world and is a world heritage site. Because of its heritage listing little or nothing can be done to the land or ecosystem. There are no roads on the island so you have to drive on the sand in a 4wd. So far on our trip we camped most of the way but the cheapest way to get to Fraser Island is to hire a 4x4 with 9 unknowns. We took our chances and met our group the next morning at 6.30am. 3 Scots, a couple from Cork, a Dutch girl, a German girl and us. Things were pretty quiet at first but I suppose most of us were usually going to bed about now and now getting up. After sitting through 2 half hour videos about the island presented by a "Troy Mc Clure" style character we made our way to the supermarket to load up on provisions and booze. We caught the boat and an hour later we were on the island Cookin' duties on our first night on Fraser
Cookin' duties on our first night on Fraser
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The driving was pretty tough going and there were a few heads bouncing off the roof. We had some lunch and got to know each other. It turned out we'd been lucky as there were no "melters" in our group, everyone seemed pretty easy going and more importantly keen on setting up camp and cracking the beers open. But there was a problem... a big smelly one... The Dutch girl although very nice had a serious BO problem. There were 3 tents, the Scots claimed one, the Cork couple another and Mairead and Conor the other but the German girl and the Dutch girl had to sleep somewhere so the decision had to be made... To our delight the German asked if she could sleep in our tent! Problem solved, although the Cork couple weren't too happy about their new flatmate! Worse still she didn't shower once and wore the same red t-shirt the whole weekend, despite the temperature soaring to above 30... you can imagine the aromas that lingered in the tent and 4wd....

We did a little sightseeing and set up camp on the beach. The night went into the wee hours and the Scots staked their claim as the biggest drinking Celtic nation. We emerged groggy eyed from our tents early the next morning and headed north to see the sharks at Indian Head. There were several sharks and the views over the sand dunes were amazing. It was more of the same the next night and after taking in a few lakes we got the boat home. On the way home we realised that we realised we had all bonded on our weekend adventure and decided it was only fair we said goodbye in true skint backpacker style....over a box of wine. We slurred our goodbyes and swapped email addresses before hitting the road. Next stop for us was Airlie Beach about 900km away.
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