Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away

Part 3!

Day 8: Airlie Beach
After the bus ride from hell, we finally arrived in Airlie Beach (pronounced our-lee) around 9 am and boy it was hot! The farther north you travel in Australia, the warmer it gets because you’re getting closer to the equator. The weather was probably around 85-90 degrees and sunny everyday; it was pretty similar to the weather back when I was in Cairns in July. So we made our way to Magnums, our hostel for the night. Magnums was by no means the nicest hostel I’ve been to, but definitely my favorite because I loved the atmosphere and people.

Now at this point, the only thought on our minds was “MUST TAKE A SHOWER!” If you know me very well, you’d know that I’m that person who usually takes up to 2 showers a day, so I’m sure you could imagine this whole no showering thing was pretty rough. My last shower had been at 9pm on Monday evening before we left Hervey Bay and it was currently FRIDAY morning. Gross! This was by far the longest I’ve ever gone in my life without showering. So once we arrived at the check in desk at Magnum’s we heard the dreaded phrase that we all feared, “Sorry, but you can’t check in until 2 pm.” NOOOOOOOOO!!!! 5 more hours until we could check in?! Well, we knew there really wasn’t anything we could do about it, so we threw our suitcases in the luggage storage, pulled our hair into braids, put on our biggest sunglasses, and tried not to make eye contact with too many people as we ventured off to McDonalds for brekkie and free Wi-Fi.

We then spent the rest of our morning and early afternoon exploring Airlie Beach. There really wasn’t a whole lot to the city; it was basically just one long street. Any local will tell you that they hate Airlie, but any backpacker will tell you that they love it. Airlie is basically a gateway to the Whitsunday’s islands so it attracts heaps of tourists and backpackers. There was lots of good shopping and we really enjoyed just walking around for a few hours.





We made sure that at 2 on the dot we were at reception, ready to check in and anxiously awaiting being clean again. So finally we were allowed into our rooms. However, as always, there was a slight problem. Most hostels have communal bathrooms like in dorms where there are 3-6 showers that you share with your floor. Well at Magnums, we were put in these 10-share little cabin-like houses with an ensuite bathroom. Usually an ensuite bathroom is a desirable thing; however, in our case this now meant that there were currently 10 smelly, cranky people who haven’t showered in 4 days and only ONE shower to share. NOT GOOD. It only took a few minutes before the claws broke out. “I call shower first!” “Not fair…I was here first!” “But guys… I’m sick so I should go first.” As badly as I wanted to shower, I was not about to get involved in this drama, so I volunteered to go last. I figured I waited 4 days, what’s another hour? Some of the boys staying in our room ended up going down to the beach, so I actually didn’t even have to wait very long. Hands down, the best shower of my life.

The actual date of Day 8 was October 2nd, so that meant that tomorrow was my 20th birthday! Since we’d be out sailing and in the middle of the ocean on my actual birthday, we decided to celebrate tonight instead. After getting ready, we went out to a nearby restaurant where we got a backpacker special of steak, salad, and fries for only $10 (quite a steal in Australia!). Then we came back to Magnums for a little bit where they had some live acoustic music playing. Then eventually we went out to a few different dance clubs including my favorite one called Mamma Africa’s, where everything (including the bathroom) was jungle-themed. We danced the night away and I could probably say that it was the most fun birthday (eve) yet.



Day 9: Airlie Beach → The Whitsunday’s Islands
The next morning when I woke up, I completely forgot that it was even my actual birthday until one of the German boys told me “Congratulations” (apparently that’s what they say for “Happy Birthday” over in Germany). The sailing office gave us these tiny bags to pack our stuff in for the next few days (we weren’t even allowed to bring our backpacks). After packing up and checking out we headed over to the sailing office to put our suitcases and backpacks in storage for the next few days. We grabbed lunch, and then had to take about a 25-minute walk to the dock where our boat would leave. At about 12:30 pm we were met by the crew who took us to our boat where we’d be living for the next few days. We were going to be sailing the S.V. Whitehaven. When we arrived at the boat, I think everyone was a little disappointed at how small it was, but we were all still heaps excited. There were 24 of us and the boat defiantly didn’t look big enough for 24 people + crew to sleep on...



Again, let me give you a little background on where we were going if you’re not familiar with the Whitsunday’s. The Whitsunday’s Islands consist of 74 islands off the east coast, the largest group of offshore islands in Australia and only 8 of which are actually inhabited. Although the most popular chunk of the Great Barrier Reef is location further north off the coast of Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park stretches all the way to surround the Whitsunday’s Islands as well. So therefore, I had to cough up some more money for national park entry fees since we’d be sailing in the Marne Park (Aye...beauty comes at a price, I guess).

So before we even got on the boat, the crew took our shoes from us and we didn’t see those again for a few days. So once we got on the crew gave us a safety briefing (i.e. what to do if you fall of the boat, what to do if you see someone fall of the boat, why you have to walk down the stairs backwards, etc). Then Amy showed us to our rooms on the bottom deck. Catie, Amber, Jess, and I volunteered to share 2 double size beds since no one else really wanted to. However, it’s a good thing we did because by sharing a bigger bed, we ended up having WAY more room than the people with the single beds. Take a look at the room we slept in. 8 people slept in here. Yes, 8 people. Personal space wasn’t really a concept I understood over break.



After we got settled into our rooms, we had to go into this TINY bathroom in groups of two so that Andy could give us “toilet training.” I’ve never been in a bathroom with so many rules! Basically after you went, you had to crank this knob to flush, then you had to hold down this button for about 20 seconds to let the toilet bowl fill up with more water. Then you had to repeat that process 3 times! Going to the bathroom was quite a hassle. Then the “shower” was also in the tiny bathroom but we were restricted to 1-minute showers MAX and we were only allowed to shower after 8 pm.

We basically spent the entire afternoon laying out on the deck and relaxing (what a way to spend a birthday!). After our stressful Fraser Island adventures, we were enjoying not having any worries. We didn’t have to navigate, drive, set up and take down camp, or cook for ourselves! This was a bit more of the spring break that we had imagined. We had the option to go snorkeling, but I passed today because I knew we’d have 2 more opportunities over the next few days at even better dive spots. At one point, the skipper Dave even taught me how to drive the boat and let me do it by myself for a little while. It was a bit confusing at first, but quite easy once I go the hang of it.



Around 7 pm we anchored the boat for the night and watched the sunset as we ate dinner. After dinner, Andy pulled out a map and showed us the path we’d be traveling and taught us more about the Whitsunday’s in general. We spent the rest of the night relaxing, hanging out, and stargazing. It was so peaceful to basically be secluded in middle of the Pacific Ocean! A birthday I will never forget.



Day 10: The Whitsunday's Islands
Before we went to bed the night before, we were a little concerned about how we would wake up the next morning since we didn’t have mobile service, alarms clocks, or anything of the like. Andy responded, “Don’t worry, you’ll wake when you need to.” Some of us objected that we were heavy sleepers, but Andy insisted, “Trust me, you’ll wake up.” Well I finally understood what he meant. At exactly 6 AM Andy turned the boat engine on and between the noise and the shaking of your bed, there was no way ANYONE could sleep through that. So now it was 6 AM and we were wide awake. If you haven’t noticed yet, I didn’t really sleep very much on this trip. So anyway, we got ready and went up to the top deck for brekkie. Dave told us it’d only be about an hour until we’d reach Whitehaven Island. This was the part of the entire 2-week trip that I was most looking forward to! :) :) :) :)

We had to take the tugboat over to the island in a few different trips. Once everyone in our group was there, we walked together on a short rainforest walk until we reached the Hill Inlet lookout point. This was absolutely unbelievable! This inlet is where the tide shifts the sand and water to create the most amazing fusion of colors. I think the 4 of us just stood here for a good 10 minutes with our jaws dropped in complete awe that we were actually viewing such a sight.



Once we got a few photos, we made out way down to the pristine, award winning Whitehaven Beach. This beach was named the 2nd most beautiful beach in world, and in one look you knew why. Remember in my last post when I said that Lake McKenzie had the clearest water and the whitest sand I’d ever seen? Well scratch that – THIS was the clearest water and the whitest sand I had ever seen. The sand is composed of 98% silica and known to be amongst the purest in the world. Often people bring jewelry to this beach to polish. We were also told that you could brush your teeth with the sand or use it to exfoliate your skin. The best way to describe the sand was it almost felt like powder. It was quite a risk for me even to BRING my camera to this beach so I hope you appreciate my photos haha! The best part about the sand being silica means that the sand never gets hot. It was the perfect temperature to walk on. The beach is about 5 miles along, but this beach was different than any I had ever seen. Typically when you think of a beach, you think water and then sand which are obviously divided. Well at this beach, the water and sand mixed together to create quite a heaps of swirls of sand and water, which was VERY cool.




We had about 3 hours to explore the beach, but I wish we could have stayed all day. The atmosphere at this beach was like none other. This was the point in my trip that felt completely unreal. I felt like I was walking around in a postcard. It’s hard to believe that a place like this actually exists! This was by far the most beautiful place I had ever laid eyes on, and perhaps the most beautiful place I will EVER lay eyes on. At one point I even started to tear up a bit because I wished that my friends and family from home could have been there with me to witness this spectacular place. I was so overwhelmed by its beauty that I started getting a little picture happy and at one point Jess yelled at me, “Kim, you need to stop taking pictures and just ENJOY being here.” She was right. So for the rest of our time on the beach I put my camera away and tried to soak up every minute of being there.



Around 11 we had to go back to the boat (they practically had to drag us away). After lunch we had the opportunity to go on another snorkel. I decided to do this one. So after we dressed in our fashionable stinger suits, flippers, goggles, and snorkels, Andy took us out in the tugboat to the spot for the today. This snorkel was much different than the one I did in Cairns in July, but it was still pretty amazing. I saw a sea turtle! I also saw the hugest fish I had ever seen. It was probably as big as me if not bigger…no joke! I had no idea fish this big existed!?



We had the rest of the afternoon to lay out, relax, and enjoy sailing. The crew decided that they would take us to a small beach for “nachos and sunset.” This place was actually heaps cool because it had an intriguing looking cave. So of course, we decided to bust out some music and have a “CAVE RAVE!” before the sun started to set.







Day 11: The Whitsunday’s Islands → Airlie Beach
This morning instead of being waken up by the boat’s engine, we were woken at 6 AM by Andy running into our room screaming, “TIME TO GO FOR A SNORKEL!!” So we rolled out of and went upstairs for brekkie. Since the water was freezing and I was still half asleep, I decided not to snorkel today. The rest of the day was spent doing some more sun bathing, relaxing, and hanging out until we finally returned back to Airlie around noon.

Now the rest of the STA package east coast trip was planned to go north to Cairns for the last 6 days. However, since Jess and I had already been to Cairns in July, we decided not to buy the Cairns part of the package and to go somewhere new instead by ourselves. Since it was cheaper to fly out on Tuesday (tomorrow) we decided to stay another night in Airlie at Magnums. Everyone else was catching another overnight bus to Cairns that night at 9 PM, so it worked out well that we had a room because we let Catie, Amber, and Adam keep their luggage in our room and used our shower. We then mucked around for the rest of the afternoon, walking around Airlie, going on the internet (I had 86 Facebook notifications!) and the like. I also decided to do a load of laundry, which ended up costing me $12 (how ridiculous is that?).

Once we saw everyone off to the bus stop and said our goodbyes, we decided that we wanted to go back to Mamma Africa’s tonight since we had so much fun there on Friday night. Even though it was only the two of us, we ended up meeting heaps of people and having a blast this night. Check out these two videos that we took. When you’re watching them, I want you to pay close attention to 3 things: 1) The guy to girl ratio 2) The type of music playing 3) The way Australian boys dance. Much different from the states, hey?





Day 12: Airlie Beach → Brisbane
After waking up and checking out, Jess and I put our suitcases in luggage storage and went down to the lagoon for the afternoon. Despite its name, Airlie BEACH, actually has quite a small beach and you can’t swim in the water because it’s inhabited by marine stingers (a type of jellyfish). So to provide somewhere for all the tourists to swim, they built a public lagoon in the park. The lagoon basically looked like an expensive resort pool, I couldn’t believe that it was just in a public park!





We spent most of our morning and afternoon at the lagoon until we headed to the bus stop to catch a shuttle to the airport. The closest airport is in Prosperine which is about 45 minutes away from Airlie. The airport is TINY and there’s only 1 flight per day (at 6:30 PM) and the only place that it flies to is Brisbane. At the airport we ran into a girl from Austria who goes to Uni with us that was on our same flight. Small world? My favorite part about this airport was the fact that the gate was OUTSIDE! Ha! Only in Australia…



We landed in Brisbane around 7:45 PM and finally on my 3rd visit to Brisbane I actually left the airport. Unfortunately we missed the last train by like 5 minutes, so we had to catch a taxi to our hostel. We were pretty exhausted from the past few days, so we passed out by 10 PM.

There's still 5 more days of break, check back soon :)

Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Baby?

Righteo, and on to part 2 of my spring break trip...

Day 4: Byron Bay → Brisbane → Harvey Bay
Since there are no overnight buses that run to Hervey Bay (pronounced Har-vey), we were lucky enough to sleep in beds for another night in Byron. However, we were also lucky enough to be scheduled for the 7 AM bus to Brisbane. We had to connect in Brisbane because there were no direct buses to Hervey Bay. I realized that this was the second time that I had been in Brisbane and never left the airport/bus terminal. We arrived in Brisbane around 11 and didn’t arrive in Hervey Bay till around 5:30 p.m. After this extremely wasteful day of sitting on 2 buses all day, I actually wished that we had taken another overnight bus. Oh well. By the way, down on the bottom of the bus where you put your luggage, there was a box of day old baby chicks! I can't believe that they were just thrown amongst the luggage. I'm still trying to figure out why someone traveling on the Greyhound was carrying day old baby chicks?



Once we arrived in Hervey Bay, we were told that we’d be met by someone who would take us to our hostel. Well we were met by a tiny van that fit 8 people. So since there were 24 of us, I ended up having to wait in the car park for about 45 minutes while the van shuttled back and forth. During this time that I was stranded in the car park, I could easily conclude that the town of Hervey Bay was quite a shit hole. Basically, the only reason anyone ever goes to Hervey Bay is because it’s where the ferry leaves from to go to Fraser Island.

So once we finally got to our hostel, we had to cough up $109 buckaroos for National Park Entry Fees...how annoying! Like I didn’t spend enough money on this trip already? Anyway, this hostel was by far the worst hostel we stayed at during our trip. Check out this picture below of my mattress. Those black spots would be the remains of bed bug poop. And if your mattress has bed bug poop, one could assume that your mattress therefore has bed bugs. Awesome. At this point, all we could do was laugh about it. Goodnight, don’t let the bed bugs bite…literally!


Despite the poor sleeping conditions, the hostel did give us all a free barbie that night, and you know how we love anything free, especially food. I remember one of the German guys asking my English friend Becca, “Becca, why are you eating so much food tonight?” And she responded, “Well I don’t know when or what my next meal will be…this is free…I’m gonna eat!” The words of a true traveler. Since we were all pretty exhausted from a day of sitting on a bus (it’s tiring!), most of us just mocked around this night, went on the internet, packed our bags (we could only bring a small backpack each), and enjoyed our last showers we’d get for the next few days.

Day 5: Hervey Bay → Fraser Island
And so day 5 began of the infamous Fraser (pronounced Fray-zer) Island adventure. We wasted no time either. By 6:00 AM we had to be up, ready, have our suitcases locked away in lockers, and in the TV room ready for our safety briefing. Before I go on, let me give you a little background about where we were going. Fraser Island is an island off the east coast of Australia and the world’s largest sand island (it’s about 75 miles in length and 13 miles in width!). Recently, in 1992 Fraser Island was added to the World Heritage listing. If you don’t know much about this, it’s a pretty big deal. There are only 890 places in the entire world on this list and they have to go through an extensive selection process before they are added. Once a place is added, it remains under strict regulations so that they can “preserve its natural beauty.” So this makes Fraser ranking right up there with the Great Barrier Reef and Ayer’s Rock (also partly why the entry fees are so steep). Fraser is also unique because it’s known for its wild dingoes. In particular, it has some of Australia’s last pure breeds of dingoes in eastern Australia, so dogs are actually not permitted on the island at all.

So anyway, getting back on track…we had to meet to watch a Fraser Island safety video before we left warning of us of certain things. For example, camp fires & feeding the dingoes are illegal on the island. Also, there are very strong ocean currents and numerous jelly fish and sharks in the area, so swimming in the ocean is also not permitted. Now one small detail that we somehow managed to overlook about our trip was that fact that we were signed up for a 3 day SELF DRIVE CAMPING SAFARI. Self drive?! Camping!? Again…what was I getting myself into? We divided up into 3 different groups for 3 different troop carrier cars (or as we liked to call them "Jurassic Park vehicles"). You had to be 21 to drive the car, so I wasn’t even able to drive it (although even if I was 21, I think my parents probably would have killed me if I would have driven a manual gear 4WD troop carrier on the left side of the road across the world’s largest sand island!). Our group consisted of me, Jess, Catie, Amber, 2 of the guys in our group from Germany, 1 guy from Finland, 2 other random German girls who weren’t in our group, and this crazy boy from Switzerland named Robin (who we later only called Robinhood). Between the 10 of us we had to scrounge up $1,000 for a car deposit before we left. Somehow I was put in charge of collecting the money. I don’t think I’ve ever held so much cash in my entire life.



After we got everything straightened away, we hopped in our troop carriers and headed over to “the shop” to pick up our camping equipment and fill out a condition report of the car. They also showed us how to set up the tent, how to work the car, what type of gears to use for each type of driving (i.e. pavement vs. hard sand vs. soft sand, etc), and how to change the tire pressure. Most of this stuff went right over my head, especially the stuff about driving the car. We were starting to run short on time and the guy was talking heaps fast so I didn’t even know if the guys in our group who WOULD be driving (and didn’t speak English very well) even understood a word this guy was saying. I don’t know how we got so behind on time (I mean we started at 6 AM!), but by the time that we packed up the car, we were only left with approximately 20 minutes to complete 3 days worth of grocery shopping for 10 people before we had to leave to catch our ferry to Fraser.

As I’m sure you could only imagine, this was absolute mayhem. I can’t remember the last time I was as stressed out as I was in Woolworths this day. Remember that old game show where the contestants would run around the grocery store throwing everything they saw in their cart before time ran out? Well combine that show with the Amazing Race and that’s exactly how those short 20 minutes felt. The 10 of us had to divide up buying “the essentials” like toilet paper, bug spray, foil, paper towels, etc. and then we just split off into groups for buying food. Jess, Catie, Amber, and I just bought all of our food together and then split the cost when we checked out. I’m not a very picky eater; however, my friends are, which made this 20-minute grocery shopping trip even more stressful. We couldn’t agree on crunchy or creamy, white or wheat, strawberry or blueberry, apples or oranges, turkey or ham. Most of the debates ended in someone saying something like, “Screw it, we’ll get both!” We felt like we were on the Amazing Race when we started to see that they other groups were already finished and checking out and we weren’t ready yet. So we just hoped that we had enough food at that point, checked out, and ran back to the car park. It was at this point that our group realized that the car rides were going to be quite a tight fit when we now had 20+ bags of groceries and 30 liters of water to add.



So let’s recap. Take another look at that car up there. That car was currently holding 10 people who spoke 4 different languages, with 10 backpacks, 2 coolers of food, 3 days worth of groceries, 3 tents, 3 tarps, 10 sleeping bags, 10 mats, 30 liters of water, a grill, a shovel, and dishes. This was going to be an interesting trip, to say the very least.



We made it to the ferry on time, thankfully. The ferry was filled with people from our group as well as other families who were taking their own 4WD cars over to the island. The ride took about 45 minutes until we finally arrived on the west coast of Fraser. Once we drove the car off the boat we had to stop at this resort to get our camping permits and let air out of the tires. We were pretty jealous of the people staying at the resort who were lounging by the pool eating lunch while we knew that we’d be camping the next few days…

Now we were ready to begin our journey. The east coast of Fraser Island has all the nice spots, so the plan was to drive across the island today and set up camp on the east coast. As one could imagine, driving on sand is not easy, especially soft sand. Across the inland, Fraser basically just has these narrow sand “roads” that you can’t really drive any faster than 20mph on. And trust me, that was fast enough. We were getting jolted and thrown every which way. It was kinda like driving on speed bump after speed bump for a few hours. The funny thing about the roads is that they were only wide enough for one lane of driving, but you were allowed to drive on the roads both ways. So if while you’re driving along, you see another car come from the opposition direction, one person had to stop and back up until the other person could pass. This didn’t really happen that often, but it still got pretty annoying after a while. None of the roads had names or signs either. The map below is almost the exact map we were given of the island. As you can see, the “roads” are basically just a bunch of squiggly lines on the map. We really had no way to know if we were even driving in the right direction and it didn’t take long for people to get pretty testy and irritated with each other as we argued about which way to drive. Being in this car was sorta like being on a stressful family vacation, except with some strangers and some friends. Weird combination.



After a few hours of bumpy driving, we managed to make it to our first destination, Central Station, which was exactly half way in the middle of the island. Here at Central Station, we started to notice the warning signs everywhere for dingoes. Being an avid Seinfeld fan, and cracking the joke so many times, I wanted to see a wild dingo so bad! If I only knew what the next few days had in store for me…. Anyway, here we went on a pretty cool rainforest walk.



We hadn’t seen our other two groups since we arrived, so we figured we were ahead of them since our car was the first to leave. So we decided to go on a bit longer walk to see Basin Lake. It turned out that the walk was a bit longer than we imagined, and Basin Lake wasn’t really anything special. So we made it back to our car around mid afternoon and our next plan was to finish driving to the beach and set up camp for the night.



Well I’m not quite sure what happened… maybe it was the slow driving, or maybe it was the wrong turns, but the sun was setting and we still had not arrived at our camp site. By the time we found our site and met up with the other 2 groups, it was pitch black outside. So we had to set up our tents and cook ourselves dinner with the only light source being the headlights of our car. I had never really camped before, so I was in for quite a treat. The 4 of us shared a pretty small tent, so thankfully we all liked each other haha. We didn’t have any mobile service on the island, so I’m not really sure what time we fell asleep that night. After an early morning and a stressful day, I’d estimate we passed out before 10 pm.

Day 6: Fraser Island
Today was our full day to explore Fraser. Because we’d be driving along the beach, we were restricted to the times that we were allowed to drive based on when the high tide was that day. So we all woke up around 7 am so that we could take down camp, pack up the car, eat brekkie, and be on the road by 8 am. After we woke up, our English friends Becca and Ellie told us that when they went to bed the night before there were 2 dingoes right outside our tent. Dingoes RIGHT outside my tent and I was sleeping and didn't even know!

Today’s ride was MUCH smoother than yesterday and MUCH faster. The speed limit on the beach was 80 km per hour. We were literally just driving parallel to the ocean, which was absolutely amazing. This was my view from the car…rough right?



Our first stop for the day was at the shipwreck of the S.S. Maheno. There was no way you could miss this! The ship was originally built in the early 1900s in Scotland as a luxury passenger ship. Then during WWI the ship served as a hospital ship in the English Channel. Then in 1935 the ship was being towed from Melbourne when it was caught in a cyclone and ended up beached on Fraser Island. The shipwreck looks pretty huge (and it is), but actually 3 stories of it are buried under the sand. Because of its deteriorating condition, you’re actually not allowed to come within 3 meters of the shipwreck, but not very many people seemed to actually follow that rule.



Our next destination was the Champagne Pools. However, on our way there we stopped to help out a family whose car was stuck in the sand. Well, the boys really did most of the helping/pushing while we had a chat with the mom and daughter of the family. They were from Melborune and just on holiday. It seems like Fraser Island is a popular vacation spot for Australians as well as backpackers.



Finally we made it to the Champagne Pools, where we spent about 2 hours hanging out. The pools are a popular swimming hole on Fraser where the ocean waves crash over the rocks into shallow sandy pools. They got their name from the foaming water in the pools. Some of the water formed puddles in the sand which was really warm and perfect for relaxing.




While I was laying around, I started to see a huge crowd of people rush toward one of the pools. It looked like something big was going on, so of course I also rushed over (unfortunately without my camera!). Turns out that an octopus washed up in one of the pools. An OCTOPUS…how cool! However, one jerk decided that he should actually pick up the octopus, so it obviously got angry and inked all over the place. I saw an octopus ink!

Our next stop was Indian Head which is a coastal headland towards the top of the 75 mile beach of Fraser. It only took about 10 minutes to climb to the top. Indian Head had some of the most beautiful views of the island (like the ones on the postcards). The areas on the edge were restricted areas, but again no one really seemed to follow that rule.




On our way back, we experienced probably the scariest moment of our entire trip. To get back to the beach, we had to drive down a pretty steep sand dune. We watched the cars in front of us go down, and decided that going to the left of the dune would be safest. Well we went for it, and our car nearly tipped over! Thankfully it didn’t, but it was still pretty scary. Why didn’t we sign up to go on the air-conditioned bus tour again?

So after that thrill, we decided to head to our campsite for the night and set up (before dark this time!). Although I wasn’t becoming a huge fan of the whole camping thing, I will admit that camping along the beach was pretty awesome. I mean this was our view from inside the tent…hard to complain?



After setting up camp, we decided to take a 2 km walk to Eli Creek. On the way there we spotted about 10 different jellyfish washed up, so we had to be especially careful where we walked. Eli Creek is the largest creek on the eastern beach of Fraser and pours up to 4 million liters of clear, fresh water into the ocean nearly every hour. Who needs showers anyway when we got to hang out in a fresh water creek?




We made our way back to camp, cooked ourselves dinner, hung out for the rest of the night by the beach until we passed out pretty early again.

Day 7: Fraser Island → Hervey Bay → Airlie Beach
Day 7 began around 5:00 AM when our friend Adam knocked on our tent telling us to get up to watch the sunrise with him. As much as I didn't want to get up, I really did want to see the sunrise. So Amber, Catie, and I grabbed our cameras and walked down to the beach to join Adam. This sunrise was absolutely stunning and I’m so glad I made myself get up to see it. That was probably one of my favorite parts of this trip.



After the sun had risen, Adam, Amber, and I were just hanging out by the beach talking. Then suddenly I see Adam look to the right of me and casually say, “Oh, hey.” I thought that someone else from our group had joined us, so I turned to look to see who it was. Well to my surprise, it was not a person, but rather a dingo! A dingo! A wild dingo was standing only a few close feet away from me.



AH! What was I suppose to do again? The funny thing about the whole situation was that I remember back when we were watching the safety video, everyone laughed and made fun of the part of the video where the corny people demonstrated what to do if you see a dingo as they crossed their arms and slowly backed away. Well you can laugh as much as you want, but when the time actually comes and there’s a dingo in front of you, you’re gonna cross your arms and slowly back away! I couldn’t remember if you were supposed to look at it or not. The dingo was defiantly staring at me though. All I could remember was the part of the Dingo Warning sign that read, “If attacked – Defend yourself aggressively.” I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to do that! I was absolutely terrified, but quite excited at the same time because I was seeing a dingo up close and personal. The dingo then actually laid down and started growling at me. As I was standing there shaking in my shoes, I was actually snapping some shots of him as well since I still had my camera from the sunrise. Typical me, right? Eventually the dingoe got uninterested in me and left. That was quite an interesting start to my day.



After eating brekkie, taking down camp, and packing up, we were off at about 8 AM. Our only destination for the day was the place that we were most excited to visit on Fraser Island, Lake McKenzie. Lake McKenzie is probably the most visited site on the island, and after seeing the pictures, you’d understand why!



The water in the lake is some of the clearest in the world. Lake McKenzie is a “perched” lake which means that it only contains rainwater, no groundwater, and isn’t fed by streams and doesn’t flow into the ocean either. Before arriving, I had seen pictures of Lake McKenzie, but when I finally set my own eyes on it, I couldn’t believe its beauty. The sand was almost pure white and the water was crystal clear. I couldn’t believe that a place like this actually existed… and I couldn't believe that I was actually there!



We spent about 3 hours enjoying our time at Lake McKenzie. Lying on the sand was almost like getting a massage. It was also interesting that there was absolutely no wind at all, so it got pretty hot and we needed to take constant dips in the water.



We knew that we had to catch the 4 PM ferry back to Hervey Bay, so we planned to leave Lake McKenzie at 1:30 which would give us more than plenty of time to drive back, pump up our tires, and get on the ferry. Well everything was going just fine, until we were about 45 minutes away. There seemed to be a hold up on the road. We got out of the car to see what was going on. Well there was a 7 car hold up, because one car was stuck and wasn’t able to make it up one of the sand dunes. And since the roads are only one lane and so narrow, you can’t exactly pass the other cars. This wasn’t good. We sat there for about a half an hour watching this car 7 cars ahead of us fail numerous times at driving up this sand dune. Then we started to get kinda worried. Our ferry left at 4 PM and that was the last ferry that left Fraser Island for the day. If we missed this ferry then we would be stuck on the island for another night, miss our bus to Airlie Beach, and be totally screwed for the rest of our trip…and it wouldn’t even be our fault! So FINALLY this car made it up the hill, but then we sat there and watched this huge bus fail numerous times at making it up as well. We were doomed. Finally some guy who worked at the resort on the island (and was also late for work) came and told everyone that they had to let more air out of the tires and get more acceleration if we wanted to make it up the dune. So everyone started letting air out of their tires and finally everyone started making it up. We rushed back to the resort to pump our tires and made it onto the ferry with only about 5 minutes to spare. PHEW! Talk about a close one.

After dropping off our camping equipment at the shop, we finally arrived back at our hostel around 5:30. However, since we actually weren't staying at the hostel that night, we weren't able to take any showers. At this point, no one had showered in 3+ days, so everyone was pretty pissed off and cranky about this. Especially because in a few hours we'd be cramming onto another overnight Greyhound and wouldn't be able to shower until the next day....gross. We had some spare time to reorganize our suitcases and eat dinner before heading back to the bus terminal.

Next we were off to Airlie Beach. This bus ride was by far the worst one yet. It was the longest (13 hours...only 1 hour short of a plane ride from LA to Sydney), and had some interesting happenings along the way. Only about an hour in, the bus driver pulled off the side of the road for 35 minutes because someone had clogged the toilet on the bus and he had to fix it (wouldn't you hate to be that person?). Then a few hours later, the bus driver stops the bus and runs outside with a tiny fire extinguisher. What was going on? Well the truck in front of us was completely on fire! Why the bus driver thought that his tiny fire extinguisher would help is beyond me. After about 5 minutes, the bus driver runs back on our bus, hits the gas, swerves around the truck on fire, then gets on the PA and says "good thing we got around that before the gas tank blew up!" Gosh, what a trip. And it's not even half over yet....

Stay tuned for Part 3, Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays Islands coming soon :)

Catch ya later!

P.S. For those of you who haven’t heard yet…I recently booked a 10 day trip to Fiji at the end of November before I return home. I mean, I gotta go out with a bang, hey?

The Life of a Surf Bum

Hey everyone! Again I apologize about being a bit behind on my blogs, but things have been quite crazy since I’ve been back from holiday. However, let me begin with part one of my spring break…

Since the University of Newcastle gives us 2 full weeks off for spring break, it’s basically the perfect opportunity for international students to travel (especially since all the Australians go home and no ones around anyway!). The whole thing began way back in August when my friends and me spent about 6 hours in STA travel one day trying to figure out and plan our perfect spring break trip that suited everyone. The original plan was to travel the east coast for 1 week and go to New Zealand for the second week. However, after all hopes of going to New Zealand went down the drain (long story…) we were back to the drawing board. We ended up deciding to buy an STA travel preplanned trip that traveled up the east coast to some of Australia’s best spots. Although the trip was heaps expensive, we all decided that we may only be in Australia once and this would by no doubt be the best spring break trip of our lives.


Day 1: Newcastle → Byron Bay
After an extremely stressful week composed of papers, projects, coffee, overdue library books, energy drinks, packing, and very little sleep, Friday had FINALLY arrived. Everyone met at the Brewary in downtown Newcastle where we were able to meet and hang out with the other 20 uni students that we would be traveling with for the next 2 weeks. Our group was composed of me, Catie, Amber, and Jess as well as a few other Americans, and students from Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, England, and Norway. Straight away we realized that there was going to be a language barrier with some of the people who didn’t speak English very well. So after meeting and mingling with everyone for about 2 hours, we made our way over to the bus terminal to prepare for the first of many overnight buses. We were taking Greyhound Australia, which is quite popular because they offer a pass that allows people to travel either up or down the entire east coast of Australia for heaps cheap. However, this also means that every single seat is filled (and assigned?) so sleeping sitting up in your chair is really your only option.



Day 2: Byron Bay
About 11 hours later, we finally arrived into the wonderful town of Byron Bay. Although I’ve already been to Byron a month ago, I was heaps keen to go back because it’s one of my favorite places in Australia. So as we all piled off the bus half asleep and quite crabby from the poor nights sleep, we realized that we had no idea where our hostel was! Luckily, me and Amber remembered walking by this hostel the last time we were in Byron, so we were able to point everyone in the direction of where to go. So after arriving at the Nomad’s Odyssey, we stumbled upon our first major problem. It was currently 7:07 am, we weren’t allowed to check into our rooms until 2 pm, and we had a surf lesson at 1 pm. Since each of us had a suitcase, the receptionist told us that we could place our luggage in their storage room, conveniently located on the top floor of the hostel (did I mention that the elevator didn’t work?). So after we made it up to the 4th floor, we knew straight away that this weekend would be an interesting one. The hallway was packed with about 25 extremely loud and obnoxious Australian boys playing cricket in the hallway (at 7:15 am!). Turns out that there was a footie competition that Sunday in Gold Coast, called Uni Games, so the teams usually stop in Byron for a few nights on their way there. Therefore, the ENTIRE hostel (minus our group) was completely booked up to various footie teams from across the country. I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep in Byron Bay…

Catie, Amber, Jess, and I decided to go to my favorite café in Byron (Twisted Sister) for brekkie as we were all completely starving. This may have quite possibly been the best breakfast I have ever eaten in my life. So at this point, we had about 5 hours to kill and nowhere to sleep, so instead we walked down to the beach and passed out for a few hours. Well rested, we made our way back to the hostel and started to get ready for our first surf lesson.



I was so excited to learn to surf. I really wasn’t expecting to be any good at it at all, but since surfing is one of Australia’s most popular sports, I had to try! We were taking surf lesson with the company MojoSurf, rated the best surf school in Australia. Jess had gone on an entire weekend surf camp a few weeks earlier and had the time of her life. Mojo tries to make everything heaps fun; I mean their motto is “Yewwwwwwwwww!” and the van they picked us up in was cranking cool surf tunes. We drove for about 20 minutes to Lennox Head, a town nearby where we’d be surfing for the day. A reoccurring thing I’ve noticed I’ve had to do in Australia is sign my life away in various forms. Just like skydiving, Mojo had us sign a release form basically saying that we wouldn’t sue them if we died. My personal favorite line of the risk list was, “you may be attacked, stung, or bitten by a shark, jelly fish, bluebottle, or other creature." What was I getting myself into?





Since it was pretty nice out and the water wasn’t that cold, I was glad to hear that we didn’t have to wear wetsuits. Instead Mojo gave us all rash guards (rashies) to wear out. I was so ready! Next they gave us each surfboards and had us carry them down to the beach. Mojo gives everyone 9 foot high foam boards because their best for beginners to learn on. So not only was this board 4 feet taller than me, but it also weighed 50 pounds! So the surf instructor gives me my board to walk down to the beach with, but my arms were too short that I couldn’t hold the board at my side! So instead he suggested trying to carry it on my head. Well, have you ever carried 50 pounds on your head before? Not really an easy task. I’m not quite sure how, but eventually I did make it down to the beach with my board, but I was already exhausted and we hadn’t even started yet! It was gonna be a long day…



The beach in Lennox Head that they took us to was absolutely beautiful, and quite remote which was nice that I wouldn’t have too many witnesses to see me embarrass myself. Once everyone was down, one of the surf instructors started teaching us about rips and currents and tides, and I’m not gonna lie, it all went over my head. Next they had us do some stretches and warm-ups which included leapfrog and wheelbarrow races. Then finally we learned how to actually get out there and the steps to standup on our board. They had us all practice about a million times on the sand while they came around to give us tips and pointers. Paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, push up, jump, twist. I had this down. The surf instructor told me I looked like a pro! Maybe I wouldn’t be so bad at this after all?



Well we finally got out into the water, and I was AWFUL! I mean I was kinda expecting to be pretty terrible, but I was just having the hardest time ever. I could barely carry my board and every wave would push me back that I couldn’t even get out far enough to get on my board. I probably swallowed a gallon of salt water by the end of the day, and I already had cuts and scrapes all over my legs. So after about half an hour of failing miserably, one of the surf instructors taught me how you have to jump over the waves so that they don’t push you back. Well why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner!? Finally I was able to get out far enough to catch a wave. Luckily, since most of the surf instructors were young 20 something guys, they were more than willing to help out the girls having a hard time. So I hopped on, he helped me turned my board for me, and then the wave came! The first time you catch a wave it’s the craziest feeling ever because the wave just literally carries you. This was it! All the steps were quickly running through my head. Paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, push up, jump, twist….fall. Wow, it was much easier on the sand. But even though I fell, it was so much fun! I was determined to stand up on the board. So I went out again, even more determined, and asked one of the instructors to get me set up again. Paddle, paddle, paddle, push up, jump, twist….I was doing it! But then I was so freaked out that I was actually standing up on the surfboard that I fell off a few seconds later. I was having such a great time. I spent the entire 4-hour lesson out in the water, and got a little annoyed when they forced us to take a break for a group photo. I was actually able to stand up on the board probably about 60- 70% of the time and towards the end was able to get myself set up without any help. I actually surprised myself. Who would have guessed that I could kinda surf? Nonetheless, it was still pretty difficult and I guess none of us really actually “surfed.” I don’t know how surfers make it look so easy. I gotta give way more credit to all those “surf bums” out there.



Across from the beach, Lennox Head has a lake that is completely surrounded by tea leave trees which in turn dies the lake brown and makes the lake look like…tea, which was pretty cool! So after our lesson, we all hopped in the lake to clean off our boards and chill out for a little bit before heading back to Byron.



Day 3: Byron Bay
Surfing was probably one of the most physically exhausting activities I’ve ever done. I reckon that I’ve never been sorer in my entire life as I was the next morning when I woke up. We didn’t have our next surf lesson until 1pm, and I guess everyone else must have been just as tired as I was because I was the very first person to wake up in our 8 share dorm room and I woke up at 12:02 pm. After quickly getting ready, Mojo picked us up and we headed off to our second surf lesson. Since we already knew everything from yesterday we were able to head out into the water straight away after warm-ups. The waves today were absolutely PERFECT! However, unlike most of my friends, I didn’t do as well surfing the second day as I did the first. The problem was that I would get out there and get set up, catch the wave, and then when the time came to “push up” I just physically could not push my body up because my arms were hurting so bad from yesterday. However, I still pretty determined so I managed to get myself up a few times, including one time when I actually rode the wave all the way into shore!

Stayed tuned for part 2 of 4. Harvey Bay & Fraser Island coming soon…. :)