We had this entire day to explore the island while low-tide lasted, so we slept in then drove up to Indian Head and climbed it. The colour of the ocean was an amazing bright blue, but I had no idea what ocean I was looking at since they’ve changed so many times on this trip. Apparently when I was in Cape Tribulation, it was the Coral Sea, here it was the South Pacific Ocean, but back in Sydney it’s the Tasman Sea. The South Pacific Ocean water was so pure around the island you could see right down to the sand floor. It’s ironic that the east side of the island is great to swim in with no natural predators but completely undriveable, and the west side of the island is impossible to swim in because of the Tiger Sharks you see a metres off shore (especially from the top of Indian Head) and the deadly jellyfish you see washed up on shore, but completely driveable. Figures! I climbed all the way out to the point of Indian Head and looked over the sheer drop-off onto the crashing cliffs below.
The Champagne Pools would have been a hike out from there, but nobody else wanted to do it in the 4x4, despite the fact we drove right past them the other day. I suggested driving to them again if no one wanted to walk it, but no one was kosher with it since it was uninsured territory and we were technically lucky to have gotten out of it yesterday. I didn’t see what was so wrong because we seemed to have a grip on the driving, and when else in my lifetime am I going to be in Australia, on Fraser Island, at Indian Head, within an hour’s walk of the Champagne Pools (which were named so because they’re shallow pools that the waves crash onto making them feel bubbly on your skin like champagne). That’s why I enjoy travelling by myself, because there’s no compromising and you can do what you want without having to deal with other people.
We ended up driving back down the shore, past Maheno again, and stopped at Eli Creek, the largest freshwater creek on the island. I walked all the way up it and then floated back down to the beach. It was absolutely beautiful and the water was so fresh. I even passed a few fish on the way down! Most of the kids were waiting for me when I got back to the beach, because apparently I didn’t move fast enough for them. It wasn’t my fault I enjoyed the island more than they do! We then drove on to The Pinnacles, which is a sacred Aboriginal site of sand mountains. They look really cool from a distance, and you’d think they were rock when you looked at them because of they way they were packed and layered different oranges from sediment, but it crumbled in your hand as sand when you touched it! Again, the people in my 4x4 tried to dumb it down and seem “not that big of a deal”, but I brushed them off for acting like cranky toddlers. It was so cool!
We set up camp on the beach a few kilometres south of Eurong (one of the funniest camp names I’ve ever heard. “You’re right? NO, EURONG!”). Of course, it started pissing down as soon as we started setting the tents up. We all huddled into the 4x4 while the guys went outside and took turns setting up the tents. The tents thankfully only got a little wet on the inside. We only had one groundsheet though, and the rain wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, so we had to become inventive with getting it up. We tied 2 ends to tents, slammed another end in a car door, and took the final corner and jury-rigged it with a vine to a nearby tree. There was a giant hole burned into the groundsheet too, of course, so I had to get creative and plug it with a grocery bag.
We had a huge pasts dinner that night, and of course put more goon in everything because we had 2 boxes left (that’s 8 entire litres of wine), and we drank to tipsy and went for a little walk on the beach. I remembered we had left our garbage out though and thank god we went back when we did, because not less than a minute later, one of the biggest wild dingoes I’d ever seen came right up to our camp before bolting off. We followed him with our “torches” (flashlights here), and he was actually circling our camp along a ridge before going on. Some of the girls didn’t get any sleep that night, but I was bugged until the next day when I walked out to the ocean and saw multiple dingo tracks, meaning he came back with company later that night. And, I read that it was the middle of their mating season, meaning they were extra aggressive. The only thing that kept me from sleeping was the pool of rain at my feet, soaked through my sleeping bag. Glad I didn’t catch pneumonia.
The last day we woke up early as the sun rose and took advantage of low tide to get down to Dilli Village. On the way down we passed the airplane that also used the hard sand as an airstrip, which was also amusing having to occasionally look in your rear-view mirror and make sure there wasn’t a plane coming in behind you to land. Dilli Village was made out to be some sort of Aboriginal cultural centre, but it was just an empty reserve when we drove by. Rather depressing actually, to see how Aboriginals are treated in this country. Then we drove all the way out to Lake Boomanjin for breakfast. It’s called the “Tea-coloured Lake” because it’s the only brown lake on the island instead of bright blue. All the lakes at home are brown though, so it wasn’t a biggie for me.
After 30 seconds, we spent about 30 seconds looking at lake Birrabeen (you get kind of sick of lakes), and then drove out to Central Station. We were looking forward to some civilisation, but there was nothing there other than some cultural exhibits. It had apparently been the “Central Station” for logging when they logged the island’s rainforests for these particular pine trees that are so dense they are one of the few trees that can be used as siding on the Panama Canal! They also had one of the bath tubs from the Maheno Wreck which had very high edges to prevent water from spilling out while the ship rocked.
When we pulled out of Central Station, our third and very last dingo ran out right in front of us on the trail. Our final stop was Lake McKenzie yet again to soak up the sunshine while it lasted. I jumped in the lake as well, and the plunge off the underwater cliff is so steep that you can have one foot on the shore and the other dangling off into oblivion. Take one step and you can’t touch anymore! The sand is bright white too, making the blue stand out even more.
We hopped on the barge home after speeding down some inland trails (which was so much fun, lord knows how many times my head banged into the ceiling and we were all bouncing off one another), and we all were booked into the same suite back at Koala’s in Hervey Bay so we had a big pasta dinner together, and finished off our last box of goon. I got a few loads of laundry done (it was SO nice to not have wet and sandy clothes for the first time in 3 days, not to mention pasta that wasn’t sandy!), and booked a hostel in Brisbane called Banana Benders, haha! The terms “Banana Bender” and “Crow Eater” are slang here, Banana Bender the term for someone from Queensland (because of all the banana plantations up here) and “Crow Eater” if you’re from the south. They’re even in the Fodor’s Australia dictionary!
My bus out of Hervey Bay to Brisbane was at 7am, but the only shuttle going out to the bus station was at 5am, so I got up at the crack of dawn and ran into Mike, Matt and a friend of theirs on the same shuttle out to Brisbane. Mike lives right above me back at Parklands, so it was nice to have someone to talk to at the bus station. I also ran into one of the Swiss friends I made at Cape Tribulation and we caught up. I was sitting on my suitcase waiting to board the bus, and of course it flew right out from underneath me. Normally I would have been self-conscious about that kind of thing, but travelling on my own has instilled so much confidence in me that I actually genuinely laughed at myself for the first time. And it felt wonderful.
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