the bog blog

So, its been a long time and there's a lot to cover over. After leaving noosa we headed up to a place called rainbow beach, it was quite a long drive, especially as lex choose to check out how we'd go along a 5k dirt road. The drive out was our first real taste of what is to come, when we spent about an hour and a half driving along one road that just kept going and going, but eventually we got there.

We decided to camp at a spot called Inskip Point which is a national park and so you only have to pay $4 each, a bargin we thought. The woman assured us that we'd be fine in a 2 wheel drive so we headed up to the point. By this time it was starting to get dark and we just wanted to find somewhere after a long day of driving. The first site we came to said that it was for 4wd only so we drove around for a bit and found one that was good for both 2 and 4WD. We drove down this dark and sandy track, thinking we'd get bogged down at any minute, and finally just as we got to the crest of a little hill, we did. We tried going forward a bit, and then back, but to no avail. Fortunatly all the hours I've spent watching Ray Mears paid off, and with a bit of scraping of sand from under the wheels we managed to back it out.

We thought better of trying to get up the hill again and slowly backed down the track, how ever due to the darkness I failed to see that the track and turned and instead back into a lovely patch of soft sand. This time no amount of scraping of sand was going to get us out, we were well and truely bogged. Luckily for us though there was a group of aussies from a caravan club all huddled around their camp fire, and with Alexia's pushing, a shovel, some shower mats and a good 20 minutes of the eight of them pushing we finally managed to get it out.

They were all very frienly and sympatheic to my poor off-road skills and invited us to sit by their fire and even let us induldge in some of there apple crumble, which was lovely, but not a patch on my grans!

The next morning we basically got out of there as quickly as possible all the while praying that we wouldn't get bogged down again, as our new mates were watching with interest hoping we'd get back on to the tarmacin one piece. we did, and didn't look back.



Rainbow beach is so named because it's beach is backed by cliffs with loads of different coloured sands for about a 2km stretch. We started walking down the beach for about half and hour before deciding it was getting a bit hot and headed back, but the cliffs are pretty cool.

We also walked up to the sandblow which is a massive sand dune which over looks the town, There's not too much to say about it, apart from that it was big and sandy. It felt a bit like being on the set of star wars, any minute we were expecting to see R2D2 and C3PO come shuffling over the sand!



After our walk in the sand we left Rainbow beach to drive to tin can bay, which is the next town along. We would normally have skipped it but there was a rumour that a dolphin swan up to a spot near the jetty every morning and you could feed him. We thought this was worth a look.

The drive over was farily uneventful as was the town of tin can bay. We got there early and wondered if it was worth waiting until 7.30am the following day on the off chace that Mr dolphin would turn up. We'd spyed a nice little spot to camp behind the shops and thought we had nothing to lose by hanging around.

The next morning after waiting around by the harbour for a good hour our aquatic friend finally showed up, we were given some fish and told to walk out into the river up to our knees, hold the fish under the water, and the dolphin would do the rest. Although it took him a while to get used to lex's cooking (he spat the first fish out) he soon got the taste.



The locals told us that the dolphins mother had come up the river about thirty years ago after an acciedent and found a quiet spot to die, but the locals had nursed her back to health with fish every morning until she was well enough to swim off, but she kept coming back every morning for the fish. Eventually she had two baby dolphins, and they now both regularly turn up for a feed in the morning.

It's pretty cool.