Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

Hevery Bay does everything it says on the tin, it´s a shit hole, just like everyone says! Fortunately it´s more of a meeting place for the Fraser tours so you don´t have to get too attached to the place. The drive from Byron was long but it was a piece of piss with feet up, cruise control on, sunshine and tunes! We had to be there for 3pm for a briefing so, as it was a 500km drive we set off early doors as not to be late. On arrival we upgraded from a dorm to a double for free, not bad you may think but the double was pretty awfule to say the least. After we´d had a couple of beers, we met the rest of our group for the briefing and discovered that we had been put with about 7 girls, 4 of who were american! Fortunately they turned out to be pretty cool once we got passed the pre-madonnas.

To be honest, I wasn´t quite sure what I´d signed up for with this tour other than it´s the biggest sand island in the world and we were supposed to be driving jeeps! What that translated to was we were to tour Fraser island, without a guide, with a map and a rough itinerary, some cooking stuff and some tents! .... and 7 girls, DOH! So to put the right messages out there, Kev and I decided to do the shopping, well Kev decided it would be a good idea and I reluctantly agreed. So we got the list off the girls, did the shopping and rocked up the next morning at 6.30am ready for the tour. Pretty much all of the girls had signed up to drive, even the ones that hadn´t driven a manual before, so there wasn´t enough room on the list for me, which to be honest I wasn´t that arsed about. So Kev was designated driver for the first leg and I was navigator, chucks away and that!

After loading the van with food, beverages a plenty, camping gear and people, we set off for the pier to start our 3 day, 2 night adventure around Fraser Island. A short ferry ride later, we were in 4 wheel drive and heading for our first port of call, Central Station. There wasn´t a great deal to see there so a group decision was made to make our way to Lake Bimerjoom and after helping a 4x4 to get unstuck we were on our way down some pretty hairy sand roads. At the lake we unloaded an esky (a cool box to you and I) and made our way down to the lake through a small pocket of woodland. The lake was absolutely unbelievable. Fraser Island is all sand so its fresh water lakes are surrounded by soft white sandy beaches which perfectly compliment the crystal clear blue waters. The sun was out at full force so we all chilled out, drank beer and swam in the lake - pretty awesome actually.

We couldn´t stay for too long as we had a schedule to meet and if we were too far behind then there was a chance that we would get cut off by the sea and not make it down the East coact of the island to our camping spot. Luckily we had loads of time and reached our camp site before the tide came in and we picked a spot to stay for the night. We had loads of food and beer so we all clubbed in to get the feast going and put the tents up - to be fair, dinner was a pretty tame affair with pasta and sauce. One of the girls started to show how nuts she actually was asking stupid questions like ´do we have any fresh basil´, or ´did you boys get ginger from the supermarket´. Our standard response was Íf it was on the list we got it, if it wasn´t we didn´t´but that didn´t stop the retardedness coming our on a regular basis.

After dinner we sat round by our tents talking cod shit and getting drunk. It was a bit of a pisser that we weren´t allowed a camp fire as it took a bit away from the camping experience but we managed to have a laugh anyway. As it got a bit darker we were on Dingo watch and to be honest we were pretty much shitty our pants, we haven´t had the best of experiences with stray dogs so wild dogs surely wouldn´t be any better! We saw a couple but nothing major before a thunderstrorm started which broght a heap of shitty weather which would stay with us for the rest of the trip.

Next day, most things were piss wet through and it was still raining but we had to head off early doors again as not to get cut off by the tide. The thing with Fraser Island is that there aren´t many rubbish stations or places to wash your dirty crockery so you have to carry everything with you. Contrary too the advice given to us by the guy at the hostel, there aren´t many toilets or showers so our main objective that morning was to find somewhere which catered for all of these things. Happy Valley had everything including a hostel, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a shop, showers and everything else. So we stayed there for a bit, got cleaned up and found a spot to make some food.

No matter where you are in the world, when it rains it´s a bit shit, let´s be honest. Even though we were in one of the most beautiful places in the world, the rest of the trip was fairly shit and coupled with the fact that most of our gear was wet, we were constantly carry rubbish around and making food was a nightmare, I´ll have to be honest and say that I wasn´t exactly enjoying the Fraser Island experience. Post Happy Valley, we went to check out the wreck a bit further up the east coast in line wiith our itinerary and considered what to do next. By that time it was absolutely lashing it down and the prospect of heading back to our campsite wasn´t exactly a promising one. We decided to head back to Happy Valley for some home comforts, meaning coffee, hot water, food and beer and it was then I had what I tought to be a pretty damn good idea.

The hostel at Happy Valley was ver cheap at AU$40 per person and I suggested that we stay there. All but 3 of the group had no hesitation in voting yes and after a quick chat with the receptionist we were all booked in. The 3 girls who didn´t want to stay in the hostel simply couldn´t afford it so they voted to stay in the 4x4 rather than going back to the campsite. Because the tents were still up at the site and we had a few things to get, Kev and I took the girls back to the campsite so we could make sure everything was tickety boo bevore bedding down at the hostel. TThe drive there and back was a nightmare as it was starting to get dark and about 100 yards from the hostel on the way back we had a bit of a motoring disaster.

On the island there are loads of Dingo grids which are like cattle grids in the UK but electrified to give dingos a nastly little shock should they fancy a night in one of the build up areas. We crossed the last grid and heard a mighty crash, saw a flas of light and felt something ulling on the ground. On investigation, on f the shock absorbers has bust and was trailing n the ground and as we passed over the grid it pulled one of the electirc wires straight off and caused the electrical flash. Sweet as, we´d fucked the 4x4! Fortunately, it didn´t cause much of a problem although the Koala guys never turned up the folloowiing morning with a replacement 4x4 as they promised which meant we nearly got caught bythe tide and we had to have a brief encounter with a couple of local mechannics who were clearly cast in ´Wrong Turn´. We managed to get through all of that unscathed and we fortunately had to pay about $5 each out of our bonds for some unrelated minor damage.

Other than the first day which was glorious, the Fraser trip was a bit of an anticlimax with the highlights being a broken 4x4 and a stay in a pretty damn good hostel. The next day we had yet another early start and a ridiculously long drive to Airely Beach to join our Whitsundays tour. I was designated driver again so went to bed early and managed to set off about 2 hours later than planned as Kev was severly intoxicated and could only be woken by a mellay of banchy drums and rabbied dogs chewing at his nuts - I´ve never seen anything like it!