Guro and Caroline Blog

Wow, Fraser Island....

From our cool beach front campsite we packed up (real quick, we're getting good at this now - when we only have 2 weeks left to enjoy having amy!) and headed towards Hervey bay. We cut it a little fine for our 3pm meeting, must've stopped for a cople too many icecreams and Maccy D's on the way as when we rocked up at 3.20pm we were introduced as 'the late girls'. Out of 3 groups we ended up with a mixed bag of 11 - 5 brits, 2 danish, 2 french, one french canadian and a norwegian (incl us:) The group got on well but spent the first 2 days keeping our spirits up as the rain lashed down. We went to Fraser with pretty high expectations, many of you who had told us it was your no.1 spot in Oz. We saw why today as the sun shone down on us as we bathed in Lake McKenzie :) After the welcome meeting on monday (we were nearly a day early having not read our itinerary carefully...) where we went through why we shouldn't feed the dingoes etc we went and shopped as a group (11 people deciding how much toilet roll they'd need over 3 days.... can think of places i'd rather be). An all you can eat (before they took the bowls away 10 mins later) mexican followed with a beer in the deserted koala night club. Day of departure Tuesday up early for a chat on the vehicle which also included more of a real guide to Fraser - no you don't back away from dingos, you 'defend yourself aggressively' ie hit them with the shovel if they bother you! We managed extremely well to fit everything in this one tiny 4x4 and got all the way to the barge hitch free. On Fraser it was down the sand tracks (tricky driving) to a few lakes before hitting the ridicuolously long eastern beach to head up to find a sand dune to camp behind. The beach is a road and an air strip! v cool. We set up camp just north of the Maheno wreck and cooked in the dark and the rain. Spirits lifted as we headed to a fishermans camp with huge tarps, a generator, guitar and amps to drink our goon :) Good night.
Next day up to Indian head where we watched a pod of whales migrating north (humpbacks i guess) and then a 30min (excersize for backpackers) walk to the champagne pools which were cute but really not all that. Then zoooooom i drive down the beach - the only person managing to get stream water over the bonet!! and we head inland to Lake Wabby (its being eaten up by a sand dune) and then onto Lake Mckenzie where we thought we'd camp in the site marked very clearly on our map. Assuming the 3 signs we passed saying no camping here were wrong we ventured on... skies darkening and us with no insurance after nightfall! No campsite, damned signs told the truth. Cursing Koalas (the company we went with) and their shoddy map we met another group in the same situation and headed very slowly and carefully to a campsite we'd been to before but had no permit for and had a 9pm noise rule! we got there safe and camped out of the way (in a campervan site) and set up an awesome bbq. Thinking there'd be huge fines we awoke relieved this morning to find no ranger had been :) And there were no dingos which were cool, they'd been bugging our tents all the night before. Great day today at the lake, sun makes all the difference, so cool, if a little damp trip. group got on ok and we're off out together tonight, gotta run, no internet credit left...............

posted by Caroline @ 09:37