Monday, March 8, 2010

Australia Day 21-22 - Fraser Island

While we were on our sailing trip I realized that I hadn't told our Fraser Island tour that I was vegetarian, so I called them as soon as we got back to dry land. Good thing too - our travel agent had confused the dates so we were scheduled for a tour starting on the 9th instead of the 7th. Since we were being picked up from the Greyhound station 15 mins after our bus got in, if I hadn't called we would have missed our tour and have had to do a 1 day tour instead of the 2 day we wanted. Luckily I got it all sorted out and we arranged for pickup on the 7th. Good thing I'm vegetarian!
After returning from the sailing trip, we rushed to catch a 6pm Greyhound which arrived in Hervey Bay at 6:50am. They showed Davinci Code before we attempted to sleep for 8 hours - by the time we got to Hervey Bay we were stiff, sleepy and smelly (we hadn't been able to shower since before the sailing trip). Our ride picked us up from the terminal at 7:05 and we were dropped off at the ferry to the island. Once on the island we met our driver and group for our 2-day tour - we did the trip with Fraser Experience, which has 4WD coaches. Since Fraser Island is all unpaved roads (dirt roads with huge bumps and holes, and the only highway is actually a beach) the bus, with it's longer wheel base, is able to go faster and feel smoother than the normal 4WD jeeps.
In the two day tour we drove all around Fraser Island, stopping at Lake Wabby and the adjacent sand blow, the Maheno shipwreck (strange that this became a tourist attraction instead of being cleaned up, but this is a rusted out ship washed up on the beach), the Champagne Pools (not normally included on the tour but our driver was cool and wanted to take us to see as much as possible), Indian Head, Eli Creek, Central Station (where the timbre industry employees were based), Lake Birrabeen (also not normally included - we had a bit of a slowdown when we came across a fallen tree across the road, but made it there), and finally Lake MacKenzie (which is the nicest beach on the island - big blue lake with fine white sand) where we swam and relaxed for a few hours before returning to the mainland. Our tour was based at Eurong Beach Resort, where we had buffet breakfast, lunch and dinners, and where we spent the night. Craig and I were too tired to go out and enjoy the bar after dinner (due to the overnight on the bus and the bad sleep the previous night because it was windy and the boat was really rocky) but some of the others saw a big python chilling in the bar.
Once we returned to Hervey Bay, our bus driver dropped us off at the greyhound station (at around 6:30pm) and we found some internet, a late dinner, a bar, and then took turns napping on the bench until our 1:30am bus arrived.

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