Paul, Mark and Thirnan´s World Tour: Fraser Island

After some quality R&R in Brisi, we headed off to Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island. Mark took off a day earlier because Brisbane offered little chance for activity, and Slim was getting restless (he also had some flight stuff to figure out upon his return). Since he also forgot his camera in Brisbane most of the pictures are mine, so I'll take the lead on this entry.

We opted to do a 'self drive' tour, which is essentially a rental of on overland vehicle, only you don't need a full group to do it, they just put people in together. It's a lot cheaper, and you get to meet people as well.

Day1

We were greeted by a calm sunny day, and after our briefing, grocery run, and booze run, were on the island by about 1:00. That's our sweet ride on the far right.

And the first team photo. We were a solid international crew, representing Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Iceland, Korea, and of course Canada. Everyone got along really well, couldn't have asked for a much better group.

There were also another 2 trucks that went out on my day, each with only 1 guy in each of them. Now I know what you're all thinking, a guys dream, Paul, you missed out. Well, hopefully without offending all our female fans, when you're camping for 3 days, quite often with people who've never camped before, no, it aint a guys dream. Just ask Mark...

Luckily he did find some friends among the other trucks who went out that day, so it wasn't all bad.

No back to us....the drive to Lake Makenzie begins...although navigation shouldn't have been very hard, a few groups did get quite lost (we only got minorly lost).

But we finally arrived. This place was awesome. Fresh water lake which is just clean white sand... only in Australia. Although we were unable to swim in the shark infested ocean, this made up for it.

Who likes waterproof cameras...

Goon time! I introduced a drinking game we learned from some Kiwis in Brazil. It was a hit.

The dingos lurked near by looking for scraps. They're actually really cute, and just look like domesticated dogs.

Day 2
First stop was the Maheno ship wreck. We never did find out the actual story behind the wreck...you can make up your own.

Aside from the dingos, there was other wildlife. The sand crabs are have an orderly system of ball making for digging out their holes. We never actually saw a crab though.

And a big mother jelly fish..

Second stop for the day was the Indian's Head lookout. Nice views, and got to see some tiger sharks swimming in the waters below.

And then the Champagne Pools. The name comes from the frothy water that washes over top of the rocks. This is as close as we came to swimming in the ocean.

Back on the Fraser Island highway. The beaches here are registered highways, and have a speed limit (80 km/h). There are actually police who can give you tickets. It was really fun driving the trucks.

The tents and tarps were pretty shite, but got the job done.

A couple friendly Aussies camping a little ways down the beach invited us over to their fire (which were illegal on Fraser). Guitar is usually the instrument of choice around the old campfire back home, but they went authentic with a big honkin didgeridoo.