Fraser Island

Hello everyone. I've been on Fraser Island for the last few days so that's why I haven't posted for a while.
the trip i was on was what they called a three-day, two-night, self-drive safari on the all-sand Fraser Island. what this meant was that we were given a jeep, camping equipment, cooking equipment and an itinerary and then just shown the way to the ferry across. there were three buses on my trip and 10/11 people in each bus. in my bus there was only one other person who could drive and was over 21 so this meant that i was going to have to do some driving.
when i first got into australia there was a lot of talk about the cyclones in the north, and the fact that places like Fraser Island had needed to be evacuated. there was even stories about crashed oil tankers and spills and various other nightmare scenarios. thankfully the worst-case situations didn't come up, however it did mean we weren't allowed to go further north than the Pyoungan Rocks which as you can see from this map, http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/media/parks_and_forests/parks/maps/map_fraser_island.pdf means that there was an awful lot we couldn't get to, although the 4x4hire group did say that the only thing missing from the normal itinerary was Indian Head and the wreck of the Maheno.

on the first day we drove in glorious sunshine to the Lake Birrabeen, when we set up for an afternoon on the beach when it imediately started to chuck it down. as soon as we got off the beach it stopped and became gloriously sunny again, of course. I drove back from the lake to the Govi area on the eastern beach between Dilli Village and Eurong (map again). the beach driving was fine but some of the inland roads are quite scary. we set up camp just off the beach and had a really good night, cooking spaghetti and then just sitting round the campsite. the dingoes were bothering us all night, because we cooked at the campsite, and even in the morning they were brazenly just wandering through as they pleased while we ate breakfast.

on the second day we drove to Eurong and then to Lake Makenzie, where we spent a much more pleasant few hours on the lakeside than the previous day. the lake areas are just like beaches, with the added benifit of fresh rather than salt water, which makes swiming much nicer. we then went to the central station campsite to take advantage of the barbeque facilities. i again drove the return journey, and really didn't enjoy it. i am far too nervous a driver for these so-called roads and I really didn't have the confident just to gun it up some of the steeper areas.

this morning we drove a few miles up the beach, from where we walked a killer of a walk to yet another beautiful lake, this one called lake Waddy. this lake was pretty much a very large sand dune down into the water, and then a very steep shelving in the lake. here i again had a very pleasant swim and watched some of the more brave people running down the dune and then diving into the lake. after the walk back we then drove back to the mainland.

as i type it up it sounds like we haven't done very much but i had a really good time. i've been blessed with good groups of people all the way through this trip and this one was no exception. everyone was up for a laugh and nobody complained or tried to cause trouble, and all-in-all its been a really great few days. i'm glad i had a go at the driving but i'm glad the trip was reliant upon my driving, as we would have spent twice as long with me at the wheel, being overtaken by snails. fortunately the other driver in my jeep was in his element so i wasn't expected to do much drving