The drive was easy, no rain just nice green looking fields and incredibily high and straight trees perfectly aligned, we drove through Maryborough, which on the map looked like it would be quite large but on arrival we were greeted with a very old fashioned western movie style town with the star attraction being a museum dedicated to all people they know called Mary, so yeah we didn't stop!
All we knew was we were heading for Hervey Bay and looking for a backpackers which we had no address for, just the name Next backpackers, but it turned out to be all too easy, I took a "wrong" turn down a road and there it was!
Once we were all settled in at the hostel which was very nice and clean we checked in with the tour operators and meet the other 7 people we were due to spend the next few days with driving around the World's largest sand island.
The tour guide, Troy introduced himself and the company Unique Fraser who provided us with the vehicle and an Itinerary of what to do over the three days as it was a self guided tour, as it turned out this was a bit of a shock to Jen as she didnt realise that they just gave a bunch of backpackers a 4.2 litre Landcruiser and set them loose on sand dunes, regardless of whether or not they had ever driven offroad previously!
It was all good though, Troy was a bit of a nutter and always using the word "bushka" whenever he could fit it in, like he would say, "the offroad track at the back of Indian head (a landmark) is deep in soft sand so stick her in low ratio, bury your foot to the floor and then bushka your over and through the other side!". He was also telling us that we do things on the tour that other companies do not allow you to do and drive etc. but as it turned out this was not the case and we went where nearly every other self guided tour group went. So basically we soon learnt that what Troy told us we should take with a pinch of salt!
After being shown the Itinerary we were given a shopping list for food and we sent the girls off to the shops for us, well Jen told me i take a long time to choose stuff in the shops so i reluctantly had to stay behind and share a beer with a new friends!
It worked out quite well as it was as the shops were close to closing so the girls didn't have long to dash around the shop grabbing as much home brand cheap food as possible!
That evening was spent getting to know one another better, i now know more about Jen that I ever did, no only joking i mean the other guys and then we got an early night! and yeah the group consisted off an english couple, three Italian guys, an Austrian guy and a Canadian guy so a nice mix of accents!
Early the next morning we were shown a safety video about driving a 4x4 on Fraser Island, which i must say was almost enough to put us off wanting to drive there, they also played a few horror news stories back to back of nasty accidents that have happened there over the year, so basically if we did anything wrong according to the dvd it looked like we would die!
All the serious stuff out the way we through our kit onto the roof of the 4x4 and bushka we were on our way to the barge.
It was at this point we realised that our truck was quite knackered and it didnt like reverse, it embarrassingly jumped out of reverse while we were backing up the ramp onto the ferry much to the amusement of the other backpackers also heading across in other 4x4's!
Once on the island we took it in turns to drive the truck although a few of the guys didn't want to do it, it was quite tough going and you really had to be commited to a track once you were going through it, as soon as you backed off the thing would bog and get stuck which i can thankfully report never happened it us at all!
Our first night was spent camping at the top of one tree point beach which was pretty cool, the Italian guys cooked us up a very nice pasta dish and then it was off to bed, kinda early but purely because it started raining shortly and luckily after food had been packed up!
The next day when we got up we could see Dingo tracks all around the tents so we had visitors in the night, after our food, luckily we are good little travellers and had done exactly as all the signs had said and placed all of our rubbish and food back in the truck.
The day was spent going up and down the beach to many different locations and lakes, which was great fun, that evening we pulled up at the K'gari aboriginal camp ground where we thought we would be in for a great insight into their culture and way of life, I was especially looking forward to this and hoped that Jen could have seen what the culture is really like rather than all the bad press that is generally reported on. However there was only one guy there, Daniel who had only really just begun playing the didgeridoo and seemed to know very little, although we hand fed a couple of dingoes there which were really quite friendly under the guidance of Daniel, he also light a fire and we painted our faces in Ocha (a natural paste stuff!).
It was still all good fun.
It was still all good fun.
Our final day was spent visiting some sights we had seen before as we were on our way back although we started the day by floating down Eli Creek and then chilled out at Lake Mackenzie before heading back to the barge and to the backpackers in Hervey Bay where we are now.
Back on the road again tomorrow, we think the town of 1770 or maybe Bundaberg, we shall see where the road leads us...
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