Ex-Trip Day 6+7

Day 6 - Saturday 25th

Getting up way too early on a Saturday morning, the four of us made a mad dash for the Roma St Station again, to meet up with our tour group to Fraser Island. We get there, it's almost seven, and the only place open is this dodgy-looking place which I later regretted buying a breakfast quiche from.

Meeting the rest of the tour group, it later turns out that we four are the only Australians in the group - we have some English tourists and backpackers, a French backpacker named Sandra (quickly nicknamed by yours truly to Sandy), some Koreans, and a Canadian. We bundle into different 4WDs, and make a long, long trip down to Rainbow Beach. We also met our tourguide, an incredibly colourful Aussie guy named Paul. He even threw boomerangs and hand-crafted them.
Most of the trip, particularly the first half or so, I was wracked with the worst stomachache from that damn greasy quiche, making me feel so sick I wanted to vomit. However, it quickly faded after we stopped off at a stopover mall-village where we got some travel sickness tablets, and I enjoyed an ice-cream and a can of Sprite.

Fast forward to about 12pm in the afternoon, we're safely arrived at Fraser Island, and have got ourselves set up. It turns out that most of our group are camping, and that only five people are going to the resort - our group and anEnglish backpacker named Emma. Yes, somehow I made a link to Baby Spice (Emma Bunton - but hey, I was much younger then), and thought she was cute.
We take a ride down the beach to see this shipwreck that was originally a ship intended for the Japanese to scrap early in the 20th Century, but instead was stolen by nature and planted on Fraser Island to make it look like the British had stolen the ship back and try to swindle the Japanese. We take some photos, and apparently there are some entertaining photos of myself chasing Jeff along the beach.
'Very romantic.' as Henry later put it.

We then go on to hike towards this really nice creek/lagoon called Elly Creek, which the four of us have a lot of fun splashing around in, running through and swimming upstream in, before we took off to Lake Wobbie - a beautiful, secluded, pristine lake with catfish in them where we swam for a while, having fun with splashing in the pool and sneaking up on others with hands full of sand. We had races down the steep sand slope above the lake, and even a rolling one.
After caking myself in sand at one point, one of the other guys, an Asian-British tourist named Dave pushed me into the water, resulting in a two minute chase along the water before I gave up and went on to plotting and scheming an insidious plot for revenge. I ended up sneaking up behind him, shouting "BOO!!"
It scared the wits out of him. Excellent.

We headed back to the resort, getting together for dinner, where Paul and the other group's tourguide egged us on to eat more food. Afterwards, we went out onto the beach, armed with alcohol, to watch the stars from the beach. We were very surprised when we saw a dingo pass by. Emma had been going on before about how scared she'd be if a dingo came, and how she'd freak out. She didn't even do a tenth the amount of freaking she did.

We later retired back to our room for a night of sweet sleep.

Day 7 - Sunday 26th
On our second day on Fraser Island, we got all our gear packed up and loaded onto the 4WDs that we had spent most of the last couple of days in, cruising through Fraser Island to a rainforested area, beginning a long, scenic trek through the rainforest, to meet Paul playing a didgeridoo at the other end of the path, with the 4WD waiting.

We take another nice drive to Lake Mackenzie. If Lake Wobbie was scenic, then Lake Alexandria was spectacular. A shining lake, golden-white sand, a warm sun, it seemed like a secluded tropical paradise. We spent a good hour or so there learning to throw boomerangs and splash around in the water before we headed off to have lunch.

After enjoying a nice, healthy lunch, we went bushwhacking in the 4WD, Paul deciding to try some "new routes." We almost got lost, and the only thing that stopped him reversing into a tree getting back on track was Jeff shouting "STOP!!"
Fun times.

We get to the beach, and wait for the ferry by having a boomerang throwing competition. Sandy won by the skin of her teeth. I came in second. I let her win, because I thought she should have a memorable memento of her time here.
Our group even came up with a team name - the Boomerangs! We even adopted Queen's "We Are The Champions" to be our theme song.

We left Fraser Island with nothing but good memories, having a commemorative dinner with Jeff and Emma at the Roma St station, and I even gave a little speech ^_^. We parted at there, Jeff going back to Bond, and the rest of us going back to the YHA hostel.

Day 8 - Monday 27th
We left for the airport quite early, splitting there - Henry going back to Melbourne, and Bob and myself back to Adelaide.

Photos and "golden quotes" to follow