The dingo's got me baby!

Our next stop was hervey bay for a trip to fraser island, the world's largest sandshelf island complete with dingos. We arrived at our hostel for a mid afternoon and were put into our 3 groups, we had a group of ten, with a couple cally Olly and Katie, an Irish guy called james (or Jimbo) and alison, a crazy scottish girl plus an english guy called andy and three dutch girls who's names I never managed to get the hang of!



We had all our briefings before getting up the next morning at silly o'clock to catch the ferry over to the island. The whole thing is a self drive and camp affair for three days and two nights. We spent the first day driving across the island and heading to lake wabby, which was a good hard walk through more sand dunes to it's cold water. We chilled out, had a swim, and sandboarded down the dunes straight into the water. I spent a little too long kneeling down on the sand in the water and ended up with green algee all over my legs, which didn't want to come off however hard I scrubbed it!

Afterwards we walked back to our campsite with the guys from group A (we were group B) only to find that group C had turned up and were all absolutly plastered. Olly did a sterling job of making us spag bol, seeing as he stared off with a couple of kilos of frozen mince (read fat) and a large pot of water that wouldn't boil. After dinner the evening decended downhill as the messy drinking games came out and everyone got plastered, after drinking more than her fair share of a box of wime (or goon as it's lovingly known) lex could bearly stand. (It didn't help that we were camping on the beach, and you had to dig your own toilet!

The next morning we drove up the beach to check out the wreck of an old ship that has washed onto the beach and go for a swim in a nearby creek. We then pitched camp again and went for another 'lets go off road' drive to a lake in the center of the island.






The evening was looking set to be a fairly quiet one as we had put up our tents down on the beach away from the other groups. We had been told that we were only allowed to drive on the beach until 12.45 pm that day as a high tide would damage our cars and we would lose our $600 bond. We were all then very suprised, but equally delighted when at about 4.30 pm half of group A rocked up in there van. They'd got bored and come to look for us. They then had another hour and a half round trip if they wanted to go back, get the rest of their group and come back down to us, so when 6pm came and there was no sign of them we figured they weren't coming back. However a spot of light that we saw in the dark distance slowly got closer and to everyones amazment they all turned up. We helped them pitch their tents in the dark, before another night much the same as the first, with the exception of some skinny dipping thrown in for good fun (it's definatly the style here in oz to 'hang out with your wang out')



The next morning with sore heads we drove inland again to lake McKenzie, a beautiful freshwater lake for some more swimming and relaxing before heading back to the ferry and home to the hostel. We than unloaded all our stuff and it check and double checked by a campmaster on a powertrip before we all had our deposits safely returned.



That night in way of a celebration a few of us from group A and B went out for something to eat and a few quiet drinks, it was ian from group A's last night in OZ, so we thought we'd give him a bit of a send off. As always, our idea of quiet soon turned into noisy. After dinner we went to the local pub where we met Latisha who kept screaming at us 'ITS MY BIRTHDAY' 'IM 18' and also came out with one of the best lines we've ever heard when olly commented that we was sweating buckets she came back with 'IS THAT 'CAUSE I'M SO HOT' pure genius we thought. It turned out she'd been in the pub for about 8 hours going at it, so we were impressed that she was still standing. Anyway long story short, we ended up in some hell hole of a nightclub where shot followed shot before finally calling it a night.





The next morning we planned on leaving town, and as a few guys were heading to a place called The Town of 1770 we headed up in a bit of a convoy with Olly and Katie to meet a Ali Olivia simon and andy who were going up on the bus.

It was along drive of about 400km to the town and then we had to wait around for a few hours for the bus to arrive. We soon found out that we had no mobile reception most of the time, and when we did Ali's phone went straight to voicemail, so we decided to have a drive and look for them, we pulled up by one hostel and lex went in to see if they had arrived, only to be approced in the street by Olivia asking for directions as their minibus had not turned up.

We ended up giving them a lift to their hostel, which was actually a hotel which rented out its rooms to backpackers when they were empty, so the guys let us chill out, watch TV and have a shower in their place. As payment the next day we took advantage of there kitchen and cooked everyone a roast beef dinner (a nice change from 2 minute noodles) . The roast spuds were a bit soft, but apart from that it was all good.

Anyway, this has been a monster post, and my fingers are tired from typing.

We're now in the Whitsundays and are heading out on a Maxi racing boat tomorrow for a two night sailing trip, we'll update you on more when we return.

xx