Fraser Island

We had to check out at 6:30 am. Put our backpacks in a locker and met at 6:50 at the common area of the Palace hostel in order to get our instructions for the next 3 days. We saw 2 intro videos. One for driving on sand, the other for camping on Fraser Island and staying Dingo safe ("but in a case of emergency, defend yourself aggressively..";-) )...then we got to know our other group members (Leo, Alex, Erika (Germans) Matt, Joe, Adam & Michael (from the UK). And off we went to the garage where we swapped the cars and packed all necessary things in it (tents and all the other camping gear). After finishing this we went to woolworths and did some grocery shopping. After finishin shopping in time we went to the ferry and made our way to our 3 Day Fraser Island adventure.

After arriving Fraser, we stopped at the station, reduced the tire pressure and then started driving inlands...on sand. mate. what a feeling. the first part of the inland track is called "roller coaster" and it really felt like one. amaaaaaazing ;-) it really took some time for the driver to get used to the way driving on sand works. and then, all of a sudden, there was a car coming straight at us...the first really exciting part of our adventure. it was quite hard to pass the other car and not to fall over. but somehow we managed to succeed and continued our way towards our first designated aim - the beach.

About 2 hours later we arrived at the beach which is the "highway" on Fraser. So there we had the chance to go a little faster (up to 80 k's are allowed). Was quite cool to cruise on the beach so close to the ocean. After some minutes of driving along the ocean we made our first stop. At the wreck "Maheno". It's an old ship wreck, that just lies there...nice :)



Then we continued our driving on the beach and passed "colored rocks" (some rocks colored in red and white. nice!) and stopped at "indean head". We climbed up to the top of the head (matt without shoes!!! ;) ) and had a marvellous view. on the lefthand side there were some dolphins, on the right hand side you could see sharks and on the horizon there were some whales. sounds quite strange, but mate, we've seen it :) Later on we walked back to the car and waited for Matt...and waited...and waited...;)

Our last stop for this day were the "champagne pools". They weren't that cool as expected (because of low tide, I guess) but Leo and Alex went for a swim anyway. While the two where swimming at the pools the others of us were lucky enough to see another whale out at the ocean...

Then we went back to our 4WD and started looking for a camping area. On our way back on the beach we also saw our first dingo. He was really running straight onto our car and after we passed him, he started following us...strange....Mike afterwards came up with the theory that he did this, because we didn't stayed dingo safe while sitting in the car ;-)

After some more minutes we found a cool camping spot at the beach, set up our camp,

had a little barbie (thx to Matty boo boo who was a professional chef) and a nice night with a great view at the stars with no civilisation next to us...