Our flight was early on Friday morning, so by 10am we were already checked into our hostel. We quickly changed into our swimmers (swimsuits) and walked the 5 minutes to the beach. It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day and we spent a good 4.5 hours hanging out at the beach. Somehow it is the first time since I got to Australia that I actually devoted a day to the beach--it was wonderful! The water wasn't too cold either, and unlike the beaches in Wollongong, there were basically no waves. The rest of the day was spent wandering around, and later on Nicole and I went for a run and ran on the beach while watching the sunset.. it was perfect.
Saturday morning we left for the most anticipated part of the trip--our tour of Fraser Island! We had heard so much about Fraser and how amazing everyone thought that it was, so we were very anxious to see it for ourselves. It ended up being an amazing tour, and while I originally had wanted to do the self-drive tour, I'm so glad that we did a guided one as Fraser is quite the dangerous place! Fraser island is about 123km long and 15km wide, and is the world's largest sand island. This means that there are no roads on the island--how cool! However, it makes driving quite scary, as the highway is a beach, and many people crash, get taken out to sea, flip over, and much more. I was happy to be in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing instead of people like me who don't know how to drive on sand. It also is home to 5 of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world, tons of deadly spiders, has jellyfish, stingrays, and sharks at its ocean shore, and houses vicious dingos! How awesome is this place!?
We got lucky and had a fantastic guide and a really great group. Our guide Fabian (Fab) is probably the best tour guide that I've had in Australia and really wanted us to have a great experience. He went out of his way to show us parts of the island that aren't part of the tour, and was just really accommodating all around. We had 16 people in our tour, as opposed to the normal 40 people that they get during peak season in the summer. We had a group of about 7 of us who got along really well and I met really nice people from England, the States, Canada, and Germany.. We all clicked really well and it made for an awesome two days that we didn't want to end. This plus good weather made the trip amazing. We lucked out and while it did a bit of raining, the sun managed to come out strongly at each part of the trip where we were doing exploring, it worked out perfectly.
The first day we went to two perch lakes on the island, meaning that they consist solely of rain water. The first, Basin Lake, was nice, but nothing too special, though it was really neat to see. In between lake stops, we went to Central Station, an old logging station, where we did a bit of hiking and had lunch. We walked along the Whispering Creek, where we were able to see some eels and fish swimming around. The walks were very pretty and relaxing. The second lake that we stopped at, Lake McKenzie, was absolutely amazing. The water was crystal clear and so pure that you could drink it.. We took pictures underwater with Kelly's camera and it looks like they were taken from inside a swimming pool, it is incredible. Also, the sand at Lake McKenzie is so fine that it can exfoliate your skin and polish jewelry--how neat is that?! We spent a long time playing in the water and on the beach and had a blast. We clearly did not want to leave this place and I could have spent so much time there, especially on a hot summer day.
The second day had a lot more packed into it, and in the morning we drove on the 75 mile beach highway, so basically just on the beach, and stopped at a bunch of places along the way. One of the places was Eli Creek, where we stopped for a bathroom break. This cool creek had super clear water and if you wanted to get to the bathroom you had to walk through it. We didn't spent much time there before heading to the Maheno shipwreck, a ship that crashed along the shore of Fraser over 50 years ago and has never moved and is fully rusted over now.. it is pretty neat. One other little stop was to see the colored sands of the Pinnacles, which is basically some huge sand cliffs made of the same sand that is in 72 different shades of colors. It was pretty remarkable. Finally we made it to one of the big stops of the day, Indian Head, where we did a 15 minute hike up to the top of this cliff that looked over the beach on either side of it. The view was remarkable and the weather was amazing. We spent a lot of time up there just admiring the view.
Afterwards, we headed another 5 minutes up the coast where we were going to stop for lunch. While Fab got lunch together we went and swam in the Champagne Pools, which are little rock pools along the side of the ocean. Though they consist of sea water that is washed up, they were surprisingly not that cold, though they had lots of sharp rocks in them. We hung out along the beach there for a while before heading back to have a yummy lunch. While doing more driving, we saw a huge sea turtle and two dingos along the way! It was pretty exciting stuff.. Our last big stop was a place not on the itinerary that Fab took us to just because he thought we should see it and it ended up being very worthwhile. We went to a place called the Rainbow Gorge which is a sandblow, meaning it is basically dunes made up of sand that has been blown up from the ocean over the years and is constantly changing and being blown around. This sand is on top of what used to be a forest, so it's pretty neat. The best part about the Rainbow Gorge is that it's a place that very few people know about, so there was no one there and absolutely no footprints anywhere, it was so neat. We felt like we were in the scene from the Lion King through the boneyard on the way to where the hyenas live.. it was pretty cool haha. Really though, the sand was beautiful and in all sorts of neat patterns, and it was neat being in such a pure place. Definitely a cool experience.
While a quick recap doesn't do the place justice, Fraser Island was an amazing place and I would have loved to have been able to spend more time there, but unfortunately we had to get back to Wollongong for classes since this is the last week of school--I can't believe it's here already! And the crazy part is that in less than 5 days my family will be here and we'll be in Sydney and in Cairns, and then before I know it I'll be heading home. While I'll be sad to leave Australia, I can't wait to see all of you at home! Hope everyone is doing well, I miss you guys!
Random Notes:
1. A remarkable amount of people smoke in Australia, though their cigarette packages show disgusting pictures of peoples organs being ruined from smoking.. I think it's a pretty good idea, though it doesn't seem to affect people much.
2. They are set on making sure that people don't crash due to tiredness here. There are signs on highways that say "don't die for a deadline, manage fatigue" and newer cars have beepers in them that go off if you've been driving for more than 2 hours.. it's pretty neat
3. One of the popular celebrity gossip magazines here is called 'New Idea'.. whoever came up with that must have thought they were really clever
4. Things are dated dd/mm/yyyy here and people have trouble understanding American licenses
5. There are weird spellings for a lot of things.. for example, 'tire' is spelled 'tyre'
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