Two-wheel drive on Fraser Island

The plan was: Drive to Hervey bay Wednesday morning, go whale watching, drive down to rainbow beach feed the dolphins and then go over to Fraser Island. This was delayed though and we had to scrap rainbow beach and unfortunately returned back to Andy and Allison's Saturday evening when really we should have been back by Thursday, but with being ill i needed time to recover so we stayed an extra couple of days.

The only thing we managed to do on the first day was go to Hervey Bay Reef Park, which took about 30mins to get around and consisted of a big fish tank and a pool outside with some turtles that you could touch and a baby shark. We spent the majority of the next day in the room either sleeping or watching tv. We stayed at the Bay view hotel. Grumpy german owner but okay place for $75.

So we drove up Wednesday evening, did nothing Thursday and then got up at 5.30 Friday morning to go to the harbour to go over to Fraser Island. The only way to get around this island is to drive a 4 x 4 as the island is made completely by sand. We were therefore on a trip that consisted of 40 of us on a bus which had 4 wheel drive which the guide took great pains to tell us how it cost 600k to buy. The first road we went down is nicknamed the rollercoaster because it is such a drop down and is just pure sand. Its really weird to appreciate that the roads are all made of sand and its perfectly normal to drive up the beaches. What was even stranger is that only about an hour into our journey did the tour guide (Hayden) report to us that the 4 x4 drive electrics had broken and we were therefore now acting like a normal bus, which meant that we were very likely to get stuck in the sand if he wasnt careful. We therefore had to drive behind another bus and he would warn us when we came to soft sand and Hayden would have to drive extremely fast just to get through it and not get stuck. Very funny and added an extra element of fun which really if Hayden wasn't concentrating on this he would have been nattering about the trees which seemed to be his favourite subject. I'm all for nature (Simons converted me) but... i draw the line on trees. Im not going to get excited about trees.

The first stop we did was Lake McKenzie, this was a beautiful Lake which we were able to go in for a paddle, neither of us were brave enough for us to go into it for a full swim as it was probably one of the coldest mornings since we have been to Australia (apart from Tasmania). Which reminds me apparently the past couple of days have been the coldest the Sunshine coast has had in 30 years.
After lunch we went on to the 75 mile beach and drove along it. First stop was the coloured sands, and then a quick stop at the wreck of the Maheno and then down to Eli Creek. Me and Simon did both brave the water for this one and we walked up the creek and then swam down it. It was lovely and refreshing but still cold. When we were drying off at the bottom of the creek though we saw a dingo, which was amazing to see especially as reading about it there does only seem to be about 100-200 on the island.

We had to change buses at the end of the day as there was no way our broken bus would have been able to get us back to the other side of the airport through the sand, its stange that the island is just pure sand and even though all the roads are used they dont want to seal them and they want to keep them as natural paths. Good though. Because of the bus issues this meant we missed the boat back to Harvey Bay so they had to charter a boat especially for the 40 of us which was good.

The evening was spent in the local bar near to our hotel. Simon liked this place as its a good people watching place and there was lots of very drunk Aussies dancing away to the live singer/guitarist. Whale watching in the morningm so it was early to bed again.