Rainbow Beach, Fraser Island and Scooteroo!

Hi there,

Today I finally have the chance to unwind and sit behind a computer :) I think I slept as much last night as the three nights before added together (about 11 hours). But then again, the trip to Fraser Island was the highlight of my travel in Australia so far!

We left Noosa where the rain had been spoiling most of our fun and headed for Rainbow beach. Rainbow beach is a really small town and the only reason to go there is because it is the ferry transfer point to get to Fraser Island. There is one nice attraction and that are the coastline cliffs which are very colorful. Hence the name Rainbow Beach. There is also a Sandglow trip(where they take you to a large area of sand surprisingly situated in a forest). You can do sandboarding there, throw boomerangs and watch the sunset. It was a really nice trip. Only bad luck I had was that my camera caught some sand in the lens mechanism, and now the camera lens refuses to move out. Which pretty much means it doesn't work anymore and I will need a new one.. Luckily the pictures are ok and I can also have the ones Anko made.

For the Fraser Island tour, we got an extensive briefing the day before. We would be going with three 4WheelDrive jeeps, one of them carrying a trailer full of food, drinks, pots and pans. Our guide was called Joel; nice, laid back guy who played guitar as well. Fraser Island is quite a big island (120km by 24km). It is quite unique in the sense that it is built up of sand which makes it a huge sanddune, but holds rainforests and other plant vegetation as well. This is possible because of a bacteria that is present in the sand and provides nutrients for the plants to grow. For more details, go to wikipedia.
Fraser Island is also quite unique in the sense that its main highway and only airstrip are both a beach.
Furthermore, Fraser holds a large population of Dingo's, wild dogs.

In each jeep there were 8 people. We had a really nice group with 4 Irish (fun is almost guaranteed when you have Irish people on board), an English guy and a German girl. Most of the day we were driving on bumpy roads or sandy beaches (taking turns) with rock music coming out of the speakers. Great fun! We stopped at a lake called lake McKenzie, which is also quite special in a way i don't quite remember. Anyway, what i do remeber is that the water is so pure it is unsuitable for many animal species.

Around four o clock we arrived at our camp location. The tents were already set up for us. The ladies of our group did the cooking the first day, so we could sit back and relax. (Yeah, i know what you're thinking: damn, he's having a really tough time down there..) At night it was party time, but I heard from a couple of followers it is not that interesting to read about so i'll skip it!
The second day we had to get up at 7 o clock. The matrasses we slept on were really thin, so even though I didn't get a lot of hours of sleep, I was happy to get up.
That day we drove around a lot again and watched the beauty of the Island. We had a swim in some salt water pools they call the Champaign Pools. There were some Oister-like shellfish living in those pools, that closed their shell immediately when you touch them. In the afternoon we went to the shipwreck of a large boat which washed ashore on Fraser Island in the 1930's. It was a passenger boat travelling between Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania and New Zealand in the 1920's. When it became obsolete, it was sold to the japanese. They were bringing it home for scrap metal, but the ship got caught in a hurricane and washed ashore on Fraser Island. Everything of value was taken off the ship, so all that is left is the skeleton. Funny fact is that the Australian Army used it as a practice target in the sixties, so there is little left of the backside of the ship.

In the evening we went to the beach to see the starry sky, which is incredible in a desolated place like Fraser Island. I brought my guitar to the beach as well so we sang some songs there. Since everyone was either tired from the night before or had drunk their whole stash of alcohol the night before, we didnt go to bed too late.

On thursday we went to another lake called Lake Wobby. This one was a lot smaller than lake McKenzie, but a lot less shallow, so you could make some nice jumps in the water. See pictures:) Its also really pleasant to swim sometimes just to freshen up, because there were no hot showers on the island.
In the afternoon we took the ferry back to Rainbow beach and cleaned the car out.
During the evening there was live music in our hostel by Joel (our tour guide). He asked me on stage as well and we did a few songs. That was really great! I will try to put the movie Anko made of it on Facebook.

Yesterday we went on to a place called 1770 or Agnus Water. Its called 1770 because this is where James Cook landed in 1770 to get supplies when he made his expedition and first 'discovered' Australia. I put Australia in between marks because it was actually the Dutch who first found it but they decided it wasnt really a fertile exploitable land. (Stupid stupid stupid! Australia could have been a Dutch-speaking continent..)

In the afternoon we did another awesome thing called Scooteroo. You get leather jackets, a helmet, and a motorbike to drive. Really cool! Except for the fact that I am kind of a sucker for speed, and they made us drive quite slowly most of the time, so I had to really fight my impatience. In the end we could go at max speed and that was awesome! And of course the jackets looked really cool.

Last night I went to bed at 20.00 o clock, cause i had to catch up some sleep. Today we took our last chance to surf, because as we go further up north, we will soon be alongside the Great Barrier Reef, which blocks the waves. I was hoping to be almost a pro at surfing by the time we got here, but it is quite hard to get the hang of it. Anyway I enjoyed it!

Anko and I are still good buddies, so I think we will continue the rest of the trip together. It's really good to have someone you know with you when you go somewhere new. And during the evening when you get to know some other people, we often sit at a different part of the table, so it is not limiting us from meeting other people. By now I am quite certain I will stay for 3,5 months, so i will stay for three more weeks than I had planned. I'll be home just before my birthday. But I'm sure it wont become more than that, because I do miss home sometimes, and if I would go plucking fruit for half a year or something, it would feel more like a waste of time than anything else. When I read messages from you guys at home, I realize that life is going on there as well without me. But then again, I am having an awesome time here, so dont expect me to come home before my three months are over!

Little brother, check your facebook if you have the time. I think i read you joined SSR in an email, but I am really curious about how you like the student life so far!

Bye for now to everyone!

Jelle

ps: unfortunately, i dont have time for putting up pictures anymore now, so ill do that next time.