Week 12 - Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and Spot X

Friday 18th December - Today we crawled out of bed as late as possible after our night out in Brisbane! We checked out and then waited for the bus to turn up to take us to Surfers Paradise. The bus was due at 1.30 and about 2pm one turned up! Unfortunately there were clearly many more people than would fit on the one bus. It turned out there were two buses, but the trailer had literally snapped and come off the back of the other one and so they were still halfway to Brisbane and waiting for a repair! We crossed our fingers and hoped our names were listed on the first bus but unfortunately not so we resigned ourselves to settle down and wait. The bus rocked up in Brisbane a whole 4 hours later when we were starting to get very tired and fed up!

This meant we got to Surfers Paradise rather late - 6.30pm instead of 3pm! The hostel was probably one of the worst we have stayed in - very cramped and no room to put bags at all! We decided to go straight out so we spent as little time there as possible! We wandered into the centre of Surfers Paradise, which with its huge skyscrapers and slighty 'Las Vegas' feel was not at all like either of us imagined but was very fun!

On the way we found a mini-golf centre and I challenged James to a game. Although he beat me on the first round by one shot it took him a full 10minutes to admit I beat him by 3 shots on the second round and therefore won overall!




After the trauma of the mini golf James needed dinner so we stopped at a pub with a food deal on and had a really nice bit of steak with mashed potato for $10 which we were pretty impressed with! After that James noticed the pub had a 'Pokie' room downstairs and so we headed to that.

Pokies are basically very low value fruit machines, where you bet a minimum of 1cent a go. They entertained us for a good couple of hours and in the end we were only about 2 dollars down so it was a good cheap way to spend the evening - much more fun than real fruit machines because you never lose more than a few pence!



We crawled into bed quite late and settled down to sleep. However the guy on the bottom bunk of James bed randomly got up in the middle of the night, crawled out of his bunk, sat on the floor for a minute and then went outside and started peeing off the balcony with the dorm room door open! Now this might not have been quite so strange if it wasn't for the fact that the drom room had an ensuite and so it was actually further to pee off the balcony than to go to the toilet. All we can say is that we hope he was sleep walking....but we didn't really like to ask!

Saturday 19th - Today we headed off to Wet 'n' Wild, a massive water park just outside Surfers paradise and one of about 6 theme parks in the local area. It was a cloudy day which actually turned out to be pretty lucky for us as it meant that it wasn't as busy as it might have been otherwise!

We had a really good time, the rides were all pretty fun and just when we thought we had done everything we found another bit of the park we had missed! It was also movie night when they have float in movie - you float in the big wave pool and watch a film on the big screen! We left halfway through the film, partly because we were cold, and partly because it was Hannah Montana: The Movie! We then had a bit of a problem as we found out there were no buses running until after the movie, which was completely contradictory to what the people at our hostel told us! We ended up having to wait for about an hour and so we got back to the hostel really late.










We had been planning to do the backpackers pub crawl that happens every saturday night and we got back literally just as it was leaving. We decided to go anyway, but as we hadn't eaten and were still both grumpy about having to wait over an hour for a bus because we were given the wrong information we only made it to the second bar before we decided it was time for bed!

Sunday 20th - In the morning we walked into town again to get some supplies and whilst we were there it absolutely poured it down! We decided that since the weather was so bad we would go for a nice breakfast and ended up eating smoked salmon and poached eggs whilst watching the rain which was lovely. We got a few bits from the suprmarket for dinner and also stopped at a bakers and got two loaves of beautiful fresh bread.



The bus picked us up at 3pm to take us to Byron Bay and we arrived there about 6pm, (its actually only 2 hours away bus as Bryon Bay is in New South Wales and Surfers Paradise is in Queensland there is a 1 hour time change as Queensland don't have daylight savings and NSW do!

We arrived at Byron and checked into our hostel called the Arts Factory. It was infinitely better than the one in Surfers Paradise and also apparently the coolest hostel in town! They have their own cafe there, and a cinema and bar just across the car park! We bumped into one of our friends from Airlie beach when we arrived who was on his last night there and we hung out for a bit before decided to go see a film 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' which turned out to be rather strange! The cinema was very cool though, with Cow print sofas!









Monday 21st - We were up early for our day tour to Nimbin. We thought it would be nice to have a good breakfast before we went so James went off to make eggs on toast while I had a quick shower, at which point our day went dramatically downhill as he realised that some mean horrible idiot person had stolen the bread out of our cool  bags in the kitchen - both of the loaves we had bought from the bakery the previous day, and which were supposed to make up a substantial part of the rest of our meals in Byron......ggrrrrrrrr!

Still fuming from the discovery we had to miss breakfast because we had no bread and get on the bus hungry - double grrrrr! The tour to Nimbin was pretty cool, although not the most exciting part of our trip in my opinion. We drove through beautiful countryside that reminded us of Yorkshire and finally reached the town of Nimbin.



Nimbin is famous for being a hippy town, with perhaps an appropriate nickname being 'little amsterdam'. It is definitely a strange little town and very different from anything else we have seen! In the afternoon we also stopped at  the house of a very strange man and got to see how he lives and hear some of his rather perculiar world views. All in all the whole day was a foray into a different world!







On the way back from Nimbin we stopped at a pretty spectacular waterfall where there was a lokout right at the top.


Tuesday 22nd  - This morning we went for our first surf lesson! We both had so much fun, James of course was standing up almost straight away and looked like he'd had weeks of practice, but the miracle was that I managed to stand up! Yes ok, I was rather wobbly and there was a look of terror on my face every time I was standing but we did both manage to stand several times! In the later part of the morning the waves picked up and we were both gettting battered and 'wiping out' frequently as we couldn't cope with the size of the waves. It was completely exhausting and I could barely lift my surfboard at the end of it but we were both glad we would get to have another go at it the following day!













In the afternoon we both had a long nap - we were shattered! We then got up and got ready for a night out as we had arranged to meet up with our friends from the OZ bus as we were nearly all going to be in Byron this evening. We headed to a bar called Cheeky Monkeys for what became a very late night! In Cheeky Monkeys the tables are the 'dance stages' which probably tells you something about the quality of the bar - it is well and truly aimed at Backpackers! There were lots of games and I accidentally entered for one without asking what it was. Lets just say it involved a straw, a bra, a cup and a can of whipped cream and leave it at that! In fact I actually won and ended up winning two trapeze classes! We crawled home about 3, stopping for a kebab on the way, and moaning about the fact that we had to be up in just 4 hours!









Wednesday 23rd - Today the bus picked us up (very hungover) to take us to Spot X surf camp which is about 4 hours away from Byron. We arrived at lunchtime and had to go pretty much straight to our surf lesson once we had sorted out our dorms for the night. We were able to share a room with some of our friends which was a welcome change from sharing a room with 6 strangers!

The waves at Spot X weren't as good today, they were less consistent and 6 huge waves could be followed by a lull of about 10 minutes of nothing! There were also more people than there had been at our lesson in Byron, 30 instead of 18, and this meant that since we couldn't turn properly it was a constant battle not to run someone over with a surfboard! We did get to learn a couple of extra things though as we had already had a lesson, and the instructor did show us how to turn, which James just about grasped while I struggled to remember how to stand up!

In the evening we chilled out in the TV room as we were shattered after the previous late night and all the surfing! We headed off to bed early to find a huge and very scary spider had made a web across the window of the dorm. Not only that but the sheets were, well, a little less than clean - we consoled ourselves with thoughts that it was our last night in a dorm for the trip and tried to sleep without dreaming about huge spiders!

FRASER ISLAND

Sunday 13th December – Today it was up early and off to check in for our trip to Fraser Island. We were put into groups of eight and our first challenge was to pick two people to go and do the shopping for the group and two people to go and buy the alcohol. These people would not be able to drive on the island as they would miss the briefing on how to drive. For eight people who had just met each other this obviously posed a challenge as four people would have to give up the opportunity to drive. Plus it is my idea of hell as anyone who knows me will know that teamwork with people I don’t know just isn’t my idea of fun as I hate to have to be tactful! In the end James and I both ended up staying so that we could drive on the island.
We had a quick safety briefing on how to drive on the island and then when the rest of the group arrived back with the food we packed it into boxes, loaded it on top of the 4wd troop carrier and headed off to catch the barge to Fraser Island.




Fraser Island is the largest sand island (the beach is 75 miles long) in the world and probably one of my favorite places in Australia. It is full of beautiful clear freshwater lakes which are perfect for swimming in, as well as rainforests growing up out of the sand which is incredibly rare, and huge expanses of empty sand dune. The self-drive tour we were doing meant that basically we now had the vehicle and the group and three days to explore the island by ourselves. We were given a suggested itinerary by the hostel but we didn’t have to follow it. As I had been before I quickly looked at the itinerary on the barge over and decided we were due to miss out at least one place we needed to go. We got the group together and tried to explain that we thought it would be a good idea to alter the itinerary a little. Unfortunately the group took a little convincing and this turned out to be the start of what would be a very taxing three days as I turned out to be a group appointed leader as I had been to the island before and incredibly out of 8 people James and I appeared to be the only ones with watches – we both had to resist the urge on a regular basis to answer the question ‘whats the time’ with ‘time you got a watch’ after we were asked it for the 20th time in a day!


When we arrived on the island we had to drive across it to the eastern beach (aptly named 75 mile beach) which is a national highway and where most of the sights lead off from. The roads on Fraser Island are sand tracks and probably some of the worst roads in the world. Apparently the military take their vehicles to Fraser Island to test them because if they can survive there they can survive anywhere! It is incredibly bumpy, full of patches of thick sand where you can get bogged and drops of up to about 4ft in the road. This all makes for quite a lot of fun! Unfortunately the beach itself which is a national highway is a much more scary place to drive as there is hard sand and then patches of soft sand as well as hundreds of washouts (where a stream flows into the sea) which are impossible to see until you are on top of them and can have huge ledges. We had been warned during the video to drive slowly and with care on the beach. The speed limit is actually 80km per hour but driving at that speed would be totally crazy!


Once we hit the beach our first stop for the day was Eli Creek which is a beautifully clear freshwater creek that flows down to the sea. It is the largest creek on the island with a flow of 80 million litres per day You can walk up to the top and then float down which we all did as it was hot hot hot and there wasn’t very much shade on the beach!


Our second stop for the day was the Maheno shipwreck which is a bit further up the beach. The S.S. Maheno was originally built in 1905 in Scotland as a luxury passenger ship for trans-Tasman crossings. During the First World War the ship served as a hospital ship in the English Channel, before returning to a luxury liner. In 1935, the ship was declared outdated and on June 25, 1935 the ship was being towed from Melbourne when it was caught in a strong cyclone. The propeller had been removed from the boat and sold before she was towed so when the rope snapped in the storm she was completely helpless. A few days later, on July 9, 1935 she drifted ashore and was beached on Fraser Island. During the Second World War the Maheno served as target bombing practice for the RAAF. The ship has since become severely rusted, with almost three and a half storeys buried under the sand. It is still pretty impressive though as you can see from the pictures!










Just before heading to our camp for the evening we stopped at the Pinnacles which are huge towers of coloured sands. They were quite pretty to look at but probably not the most exciting thing we saw on the island.



We then headed into our camp for the afternoon as we had to be there by 3.30pm. There are safe driving times on the beach due to the tides and as it was an early tide we had to be in the camp early! The camp had cold showers and a toilet block which was luxury for the Island. After struggling to put the tents up (our group consisted of 4 Swedish girls who I don’t think had ever seen a tent before! We would have offered to help but given that they chose to speak Swedish to each other all the time it was fairly difficult to know what they were having trouble with!) we cooked a BBQ for dinner and then had a bit of a sit round the camp fire James had built and lit (using antibacterial hand gel as a fire starter which was a trick we were shown in the centre of OZ) .


A spider that i nearly walked into whilst collecting firewood



Unfortunately there was quite a somber atmosphere in the camp this evening. During the day a group of Japanese tourists travelling in another troop carrier had rolled their car on the beach and one of them had been killed and 7 others seriously injured. What made this worse was that some of our friends from Airlie beach who were in the camp but who had left for Fraser Island the day before us were the first on the scene and one had had to give CPR to the guy who died. It was terribly sad and also obviously pretty horrendous for those who had witnessed it and so obviously it was a rather quiet night as everyone dealt with what had happened.


A monitor Lizzard in camp
However there were some good moments in the evening. One particularly funny moment of the evening was when Robert, a friend from the OZ bus who was in a different group in the same camp, came over and chatted to us and it turned out one of the guys in our group lived quite literally next door to his grandmother! It really is a small world! James also injured his toe searching for firewood in the dark as the torches we had been given by the hostel didn’t work and James had left our torch in the bottom of his big rucksack so we had no light!


Monday 14th December - Today we were up early with the sun and also the nosiest set of birds I had ever heard in my life! We headed back down the beach for an hour or so before parking and headed off on a 40 minute hike to Lake Wabby.




Lake Wabby is relatively close to the ocean side of Fraser Island and unlike the other lakes, it supports several varieties of fish. It is known as both a window lake and a barrage lake. Window lakes form when the ground level falls below the water table. Barrage lakes form when a sand blow blocks the waters of a natural spring.






This phenomenon is easy to see at Lake Wabby. On one side its deep green waters are bordered by a giant sand dune that is slowly moving into the lake. In a century or so, the sand dune’s inexorable march westward across the island will see it completely swallow the lake, making the 40 minute walk to get there not quite so worthwhile, especially as it really is a bit of a trek through deep sand up hills and down again and then up again! Once you get there though you can roll down the dunes into the water which is great fun! The water looks really dark green and filthy although it is in fact very clean and fresh when you are in there! We all cooled off in the water but then unfortunately we had to walk all the way back again which was not so fun!
Next we headed all the way back up to the top of the beach to Indian head. One of only four rocky outcrops, Indian Head is the most easterly point on Fraser Island and rises about 60 metres from the water. Once we had climbed up to the top we were able to look down into the water and could see into the clear sea water. We were able to see a small shark swimming around, as well as a sea turtle and a huge sting ray (which might have been a manta ray!) It was really quite a phenomenal sight!


James' driving was so good that at one point everyone fell asleep in the back!





From there we headed to champagne pools. James had to take over driving as the Swedish girls were too scared to drive through thick sand and they kept getting us stuck. James did a great job of the driving revealing definite potential for a career as a rally driver if tennis coaching doesn’t work out!






Champagne pools provide a very popular swimming hole with the ocean crashing over the rocks into shallow sandy pools. The foaming water is where the name Champagne Pools comes from. It is really the only safe salt water swimming place on the island as the sea is full of deadly currents and man eating sharks and therefore not recommended for a dip! We had a quick splash around before heading back towards camp as time was getting on and we had to be off the beach by 4.30pm this evening.
As we drove back into camp we decided that some of us would head further inland along the path our camp was off to see Lake Allom before it got dark. We dropped some people off in the camp and then headed off. The road was extremely bumpy but a very beautiful drive through rainforests to the lake. Lake Allom is a perched lake meaning it sits above the water table and the water stays there because of a delicate impermeable membrane of something or other that I can’t quite remember. Anyway its pretty special and this particular lake is also full of turtles! We saw absolutely loads of them!




We headed back to camp for a dinner of pasta and bolognaise which was nice, although all our food was starting to look a little worse for wear as we had only been given one bag of ice for two cool boxes and three days and so things like to butter were liquidized! We had a pretty early night again, mainly because we couldn’t be bothered to make a fire again and we had no torches and so it was pretty dark! James and I also both managed to take a cold shower in the dark which was, well, different!
Tuesday 15th December – Today we got up early (again) and packed up the tents which was great fun as after stuffing the tent into the bag and claiming it was impossible to make it fit the Swedish girls gave up and I got to practice those tent packing skills I learnt in Sea Cadets and got it in first time, with room to spare!

We then headed back inland to visit Central Station which is an old logging station surrounded by bushwalking tracks to enable full appreciation of the variety plants living on the island. Some of the rarest ferns grow along the rainforest near the station. There is also a beautiful crystal clear stream called Wanggoolba creek which is so clear you can hardly see it as it runs along the forest floor.






After this we headed off to Lake McKensie which is probably the main thing on the island that everyone wants to see. Unfortunately it seemed that in fact everyone was heading their at exactly the same time as we were and that no one could get through the soft sand which was the road and kept getting stuck. After we had to stop for about the 5th time in a traffic jam because someone was stuck ahead of us we started to get a bit worried that we wouldn’t make it! Eventually we got to the junction that was causing everyone the problems and thanks to our incompetent Swedish driver who didn’t appear to have ever used a gearbox before and kept putting it in 3rd instead of 1st gear. We also got stuck as well! James took over the driving and we all had to get out and push but eventually we made it up and to Lake McKensie a little battered and bruised after flying over bumps where I actually got air off the seat and would have hit the top of the truck if it hadn’t been for my very securely fastened seatbelt!










Lake McKenzie which is located inland from the small town of Eurong. It is a "perched" lake sitting on top of compact sand and vegetable matter 100 metres above sea level. Lake McKenzie has an area of 150 hectares and is just over five metres in depth. The beach sand of Lake McKenzie is nearly pure silica and it is possible to wash hair, teeth, jewelry, and exfoliate one's skin. The lakes have very few nutrients and pH varies, though sunscreen and soaps are a problem as a form of pollution. We all had a really nice cooling swim in the lake before a quick lunch of crisps and biscuits on the way back to the barge as all our bread etc. had now gone off! The lake is incredibly beautiful and getting out it really hits you that it is freshwater and you are not covered in salt – its pretty amazing!






We made it back to the barge in time despite getting caught behind another car lodged on a hill which we made it up first time (YAY!) The barge was just a short 30 minutes back to Hervey bay and we then drove back to the hostel and unloaded our stuff. While we were doing this our friends came over and told us that the OZ bus they were leaving on was running late and wasn’t due for another hour. We decided spur of the moment that rather than sitting around in Hervey bay for another two days we would jump in the bus to rainbow beach and grab a couple of extra stops in Noosa and Surfers Paradise. We hopped on the bus still smelling of 3 days camping and island but at least we were able to get a shower when we arrived in Rainbow beach. The hostel there was pretty quiet we had a game of table tennis before heading off to bed in the hottest room ever as the girls in the room had closed the windows to keep out the noise from the bar but had therefore also shut out the fresh air. There was only a fan in the room so we were in for a very hot nights sleep!