11-06-2003. It felt good in a strange kind of way to be back on the road again. From Manly we headed north on the coach and within a few hours we were in Noosa. A minibus met us at the station and we headed off towards ‘Gagaju’ which had been described to us as a ‘bushcamping experience’, naturally we were expecting tents, campfires, maybe a little aboriginal culture. What Gagaju actually turned out to be was a hippy camp, infested by mice and nothing short of a health hazard – we wanted to leave the moment we set foot in the place. On the way there, the girl who picked us up from the bus explained to us that we could swim in the clear water down in the sandy area near to the camp, also we should store all our food in the dustbins raised above the ground to keep the bugs out – sounded good. The swimming area I later discovered was a working quarry, with ‘Danger – keep out’ signs posted everywhere and the dustbins seemed to keep absolutely nothing out, all our food in the bins was eaten by mice! I had to laugh at Sarah though who had given me so much stick about spending so much time and money on our sleeping bags before we left. When she realised the built-in mozzie net also keep out the huge spiders which were inches above our heads whilst in the tents, she said “do you know, these are the best things we ever bought” – ha ha! We made sure on our day of departure we 'escaped' early on the 9 am run back into town! At least we'd managed to do a little canoing. Seriously though, any travellers who read our journals – do not go to Gagaju – you’ll regret it, especially when you have to go to the toilet (we nicknamed the ‘Gates of Hades’) in the middle of the night!
We continued north to Hervey Bay which took about three-and-a-half hours. Fraser Escape, the tour group who were organising our next trip out to Fraser Island were there to meet us at the interchange. We were told we were staying in dorms for the next couple of nights before we left for Fraser, but these turned out to be old caravans with an extra bit built on. They were pretty good though – old maybe but spotlessly clean, the best bit was ours slept six but we had it to ourselves - yay! There was a bar on site which got pretty chaotic each time a group got back from Fraser, all the groups seemed really, really young and we’d heard they were cramming up to 11 in each vehicle – we were beginning to think the incredibly cheap package booking we’d made (see previous journal) may have been a mistake. The following night we had a Fraser Island group briefing (3 ½ hours!) the guy drove us mad as his every sentence ended in “yeehaa – giddy up” – strange. We then headed down to an Irish bar as England were playing the All Blacks in a pre – RWC match. We beat them 13-15, what a game, naturally after such a victory we had to get blind drunk as I knew all my mates would be, back home in the ‘Walkabout’ no-doubt! When we got back to the caravan Sarah’s face was a picture, we didn’t have it to ourselves anymore. Four girls had moved in and basically trashed the place. There were knickers strung all over drying, rucksac content’s tossed everywhere and worse (depending on how you look at it) – a french girl who obviously didn’t have a problem being naked in front of me, in fact she happily chatted away to me while she dryed herself off and put on her underwear – hmmmm. All I could look at though were her armpits – what is that whole european hairy thing all about?
We were up at 6 the following morning for our safety briefing, the old Aussie who owned the company basically seemed to hate backpackers and after warning us about the dangers of the island, liberally addressed us as ‘bastards’, Pommies, idiots and anything else he could think off – nevermind! We’d fallen lucky – we had only 8 in our group, so there was bags of room in the Land cruiser. The group seemed OK too, a good mix. A few hours later we were on the ferry on our way over to Fraser, our guide saw us to the jetty, then we were on our own. Being the only person in the group who’d driven a 4x4 I was nominated first driver which I was dead stoked about – I was hoping it would pan out this way as I knew the first section of driving would be the hardest. I also hoped that the group would let me handle the tricky section below Indian Heads, where everybody apparently gets stuck, the safety guy had spent an hour or so warning all the groups about it. By the end I was just busting to have a go at it! Driving on the Island was great, the roads were simply sand and snaked about as we made our way through the rainforest, there were some pretty serious inclines and troughs where the road had been washed away. We initally headed for Central Station where we walked to a fresh water lake and swam, 'bugger me dead' it was cold! We headed on to Lake Mackenzie which is simply stunning. The water is gin clear and the most incredible shades of blue to black, the sand is also probably the whitest and finest i’ve ever seen. We spent a while here, swimming and sunbathing before heading off over the Island to the seeward side. The main highway up that side of the island is the beach. Normal road rules apply – other than you have to watch out for aeroplanes that are allowed to land there, plus you have to watch out for sudden drop off’s (called ‘bitches’) which constantly move position and can vary from a few inches to fourteen feet in a few hours! That’s not forgetting the tide, which if you’re not aware of, can ride up the beach and swamp you, or cut you off! It was a great experience driving up the beach, the surf was crashing to our left and as we looked out we could see Humpbacked Whales breaching and fin slapping just off shore – incredible! The first night we camped a short way up the beach at One Tree Rock, behind a low sand bank which kept the wind off. We cooked steak and roast vegetables on an open fire which was a good laugh. As the sun dropped we started to notice things moving in the shadows. I just happened to glance under the Land Cruiser and there was a wild Dingo staring back at me, to make matters worse as I swung back around with my headlamp there was one trying to work it’s way around the back of the group – inches away from Sarah! We all jumped up and scared them off – but they were never far away for most of the night. As it happened we all got pretty drunk that night and soon forgot about the Dingoes, Sarah and I were shocked next day to realise we’d polished off a 4 litre cask of red wine – ouch! Me and Bridget one of girls in our group from the States, got caught on a bit of a mission trying to steal wood from one of the other groups, I was so drunk I couldn’t climb the ladder on the 4x4 to get up to the spare wood, we must have made a real racket to get caught!
The following day we continued up the beach past the wreck of the Maheno and onto some of the fresh water outlets and eventually Lake Wabby, we took a good walk inland there and swam as high tide was due in the next couple of hours. By 4.45 we'd continued and almost reached the soft sand area below Indian Head, we had to be off the beach by 5 due to the tide which was already on it’s way up the beach, so we were really blasting up the beach. When we got there the scene was chaos, there were about 10 off roaders either trying to force a passage through the bottleneck of knee deep soft sand, or bogged down being dug out after trying. We hung around for 5 minutes and tried to suss out the best line of approach, we couldn’t wait any longer, as light was fading and the sea was by now lapping at the rear tyres. I hit the accelerator and raced up towards the dune, the engine sounded like it would burst through the bonnet as we had the drive in low! We almost made it before I had to take my foot off to avoid other bogged vehicles, we lost momentum and we were bogged – the wheels dug firmly in the sand. We dug out as best we could and I managed to slowly back the Land Cruiser out. There were other people still arriving and queuing up now, actually in the sea! I backed straight upto them. I got everybody out of the car and went straight back up the same track. The car literally took off as I hit the dune and I just floored it straight through the 150 metres or so of soft sand – I went through that fast Sarah didn’t even have time to get the video camera out! Everybody cheered, I felt a bit of a star! We struck camp soon after below the heads, got a big fire going with all the wood we’d ‘borrowed’ from the ranger station and got tea underway – great day.
Worth a mention is the bit of an emergency we'd had during the day. As we left One Tree Rock two of the guys in another group decided to walk the 5 or 6km upto lake Wabby and meet the other 2 Land Cruisers there, it was impossible for them to miss us all, they just had to stick to the beach and follow the single track into Lake Wabby itself (although many of us thought it a stupid idea at the time). That was the last we saw of them. God knows how their group missed them, but they did. We decided to split from the other groups, they had everything they needed, fuel, food and plenty of water etc, and make our own way up the Island, rather than ruin our trip. We hung around until the other group driver’s had called the Emergency services to alert them to the loss. Just to put this into perspective, if you’re thinking this all sounds a little alarmist, somebody got lost on Fraser two years ago, and it was only a few days prior to our visit that the body was found – Fraser can be a nasty place if you get caught out. It turned out the two guys were OK as it happened, sunburned and dehydrated they’d walked 17km to the nearest housing after losing the group, without water or hats, they’d managed to find overnight accomodation and got transport back to the ferry point where they waited for us the following day – crazy.
We were up at dawn next morning and climbed Indian Head to see the sun come up over the South Pacific. It was incredible as the sun rose, it cast the most incredible colours over the ocean and distant clouds, to cap it all off we saw whales breaching below the sun as it lifted above the horizon – it was so amazing, I began to think they did this on que for tourists! After that we packed up, headed back through the dune, which was easier as it was all downhill and made our way back down the beach to the ferry point (where we found the two missing persons) over the other side of the Island On the way we'd taken a chance on the tide which I wasn’t too happy about (group vote etc), as at times there was just enough room for me to squeeze the truck through the gap between the soft sand and the incoming waves (if we got salt water on the car – we would lose our bond of $400!). Sadly we’d booked on the coach North that evening so we missed out on the 'return' party – we were gutted as we heard after it was a great night, we just never thought on when we arranged the coach tickets the week or so before.
By next morning we’d arrived in Airlie Beach, after being kept awake all night by the bloody Macafferty’s driver, who insisted on waking us at each driver break – like we really cared about a coffee at 3 in the morning – get real. We’d booked on a boat called the ‘Krackerjack’ to sail around the Whitsunday Islands as part of our bargain package. The boat turned out to be a bit shabby but she was OK. Being married we were given our own cabin which was a bonus as some people had to sleep 6 to a room! Krackerjack turned out to be a bit of a party boat, we all got rat-arsed both nights after anchoring. Sarah and I forgot to take our diving cards on board so we couldn’t dive, although I’m quite certain this had something to do with the rather anal SSI dive crew who were on board. They seemed to do nothing other than bitch about PADI instuctors the whole time, I had to chuckle to myself though as the boats instructor put students belts on the wrong way round, wear his mask on his forehead on the surface (internationally accepted as a sign of diver in distress – if you didn’t know), tell stories about ‘riding’ turtles underwater – the list went on and on. I was pleased also to hear that they’d never dived anywhere other than Australia – that way they at least spared the world of their blinkered view on diving.
The highlight of the trip was Hill Inlet, we walked over a small ridge after anchoring to get to it. There are just miles and miles of swirling white sand patterns in the estuary – pretty amazing. The sand is also so fine it’s like talc – it gets everywhere and has a penchant for nooks and crannies in your camera we found out later! I had a swim, which pretty was cold until you were in a while, I figured I had to take the chance as during the summer season you can’t go in the water for fear of seawasps and Irukanji (seawasps or box jelly fish being the worlds most venomous creature – you die for sure in minutes!). On the last morning we sailed into a small bay and I fed huge Batfish pieces of bread out of my mouth, they were tame enough to handle as they came to the surface. We also had a snorkel and saw some really good corals, in much better condition than those off Cairns. We did get a 'sort of' revenge on the dive crew for not letting us dive when unknowingly they snorkelled back to the Krackerjack straight through a ‘slick’ of crap from the boat, somebody had pulled the flush earlier and this brown plume had jetted out of the marine head into the water – I could see they were enjoying watching the Batfish so much I just didn’t have the heart to warn them and spoil their fun – ha ha!
We spent the rest of that day sailing back towards Airlie Beach, the Skipper was a pretty good laugh, a dead ringer for Ozzy Ozbourne. At one point we were cutting through pretty rough water and he just got up and said ‘just steer this for a bit will you mate? – aim the pointy bit at the front towards the Island in the distance and you’ll be OK!’, so there I was sailing a 40 foot yacht for the next twenty minutes while he disappeared for a fag! We’d had a pretty good three days out on the boat. Once we got back to Airlie we hung around for our coach which came through at 1.10am, it seemed like an eternity and we we’re both buggered by the time it showed. I had to get a bit stroppy with a few studenty type travellers who pushed into the queue where we’d been waiting for the last few hours – what are they like? Hasn’t anybody heard of manners anymore? Ignorant travellers’ really are the only major downside to a trip like the one we’re doing – you just want to give them a good slap at times!
From here it was on to Cairns where we were to pick up our campervan and begin travelling the way we liked it, under our own steam, and doing our own thing.
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