From A Land Down Under #3: Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

In which we find sand in everything...

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Thursday 5th June

* Why oh why does our itinerary demand we have to leave Cairns on such a glorious day? Arriving at the airport for our journey down to Brisbane, we're greeted by the sight of a man with a greying ponytail, open-necked red shirt and crocodile tooth pendant - Mick Dundee meets Peter Stringfellow, basically.

* The weather makes for a spectacular flight, the skies largely clear except for little puffs of cloud which hover perfectly above the coast and offshore islands like fluffy garnish.

* Enjoying the novel experience of walking out of an airport with all our luggage, we head up to the shuttle train, noting all the glamorously named places in and around Brisbane: Ipswich, Runcorn, Ebbw Vale...

* The onward coach journey back up the coast to Hervey Bay seems to consist of an interminable procession of squat seaside towns, roundabouts and bad service stations (the fact that Jenni thrashes me at air hockey during one stop doesn't colour my impressions at all, naturally). Back on the coach we're subjected to 'Evan Almighty', but I reach for my iPod in preference and scroll through for The Drones' Gala Mill. It seems appropriate to be making this journey listening to 'Sixteen Straws', the album's closing opus based on a traditional poem which tells of a time long before this part of the world could be cheerfully labelled the Sunshine Coast...

* A night at the Palace comes as part of our Fraser Island package, but let's just say that it isn't exactly palatial and probably hasn't played host to much royalty. Having upgraded from a dorm, we're given a ropey double in what's like the block of a hall of residence during Freshers' Week. I feel my curmudgeon levels rise.

* Fleeing the game of charades, tuneless Oasis covers and overexcited shrieking going on downstairs, we take a walk down the Esplanade in search of refuge. But, other than the occasional surge and crash of the waves in the dark away to our left, it's almost completely silent, everywhere either shut or shutting, as you might expect of what is essentially a seaside retirement town out of season. Defeated, we wander back to the hostel suspecting we're likely to find more signs of life in our mattress. Little do we know it, but we would have more reason to curse the place's nighttime deathliness before the holiday was out...

Friday 6th June

* Up at 6am for the obligatory briefing and scare stories about damaged vehicles and dingoes, before being grouped together and asked to cobble together a deposit and sign our lives away. What with the early start and the whole concept of handing a group of students (and, er, one or two thirtysomethings) the keys to a 4x4 and letting them loose on a World Heritage site, I'm feeling a little dazed.

* After being shown how to pack the 4x4 with military precision so as to ensure even weight distribution down at the depot (top-heavy vehicles + careless packing + precariously bumpy tracks = recipe for disaster) and having done a fraught communal supermarket sweep for supplies, we're on our way, in convoy with two other groups from the Palace.

* OK, time to meet the crew - eight of us in total. There's 19-year-old Elliott aka Mr Practical whose organisational skills and cadet training at school soon come to the fore; Michelle, a quiet German whose recent travelling companion Martin has been put in one of the other two groups; Mike and Fanny, a French couple celebrating their 7th anniversary; Kareem, a flaky but very friendly Californian of Lebanese descent; and 35-year-old Austrian Michael, who's first behind the wheel but has never driven on the left before.



* Once off the ferry with our tyre pressure reduced as recommended, it feels like a long lurching drive through the forest and across the island to the eastern beach, which is what passes for the main thoroughfare and by far the quickest way to get around. Our first stopping point is the wreck of the SS Maheno, a luxury liner which was being towed from Melbourne to Japan in 1935 to be broken up for scrap when a cyclone brought it ashore. Needless to say the sea - and the RAAF, who practiced pot shots at it in World War Two - did the wreckers' job for them. The rusting iceberg has some three and a half storeys buried beneath the sand.









* The view from Indian Head, a further forty minutes' drive up the beach, is astonishing - to the north, inaccessible even to 4x4s, and out to sea, where a humpback whale obligingly rises and falls on the horizon. The water looks so inviting and we have to remind ourselves that it's the biggest tiger shark breeding ground in the world.





* Pitching camp behind the dunes just south of the Maheno, we soon discover our thick canvas military-style tents leave something to be desired, and when the central pole for one turns out to be significantly shorter than the others, we're forced to improvise by wedging a stump from the cricket set in the top, thus proving to the Europeans and American in our group that it isn't a pointless sport. Then, as the sun sets pink, orange and gold, it's down to the beach with metal beakers of wine for a frolic in the surf. Little wonder then that the Aboriginal name for Fraser Island is K'gari, which translates as "paradise".











* The barbeque over and the night's wine ration consumed, there's trouble in paradise in the form of a big-nosed German teenager treating the party to an unrequested rendition of 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' on an acoustic guitar. We escape over the dunes and down to the now cold sand of the beach to marvel at the Milky Way and the shooting stars in the stunning night sky.

* Never before has my bedtime routine involved shooing away an expectant-looking dingo, but there's a first time for everything.

Saturday 7th June

* I wake hot, hungover and tired after a poor night's sleep - perfect preparation for mornings at Glastonbury, then. Here, though, the cure is rather less prosaic than a coffee and bacon sandwich: a 7am sunrise stroll up to the Maheno, the beach shared with nothing apart from the occasional wading bird and small fish left stranded by the outgoing tide.



* Eli Creek, a walk down the beach beyond our camping spot in the opposite direction, is the largest creek on the east coast and proves perfect for a careless and refreshing splash about - though we could have done without Michael insisting on performing stretching exercises on the bridge over the creek in just his budgie smugglers...





* Surely we can't make it through the weekend without a hairy moment in the 4x4? Er, no, we can't - with Mike behind the wheel we hit a nasty combination of rut and root at too great a speed (i.e. more than about 2mph) and suddenly all of us in the back are launched into orbit. Elliott bangs his back, I land with all my weight on my wrist and Michael knees himself in the lip. There's a sheepish and heavily accented "Sorry" from the front.

* Our first visit to one of the island's 100+ lakes finds us descending through the forest to emerge out onto enormous sand dunes that rise like an alien landscape in the midst of the dense green lushness. At the foot of the steep bank is Lake Wabbi, an oasis of tranquillity except for the increasingly eccentric Michael's enthusiastic attempts at swimming butterfly. The hefty fish and freshwater turtles wisely stay well out of the way, under the shadow of the reeds and trees.





* The daytime weather may be about as good as our summer, but the fact that it's dark by 6pm means that setting up camp and getting the evening meal underway is a military operation - so just as well Elliott and Jenni are on hand to marshal the troops. Tonight we're camped further down towards the bottom end of the beach, less sheltered by dunes from the sea breeze and part of a little community of groups from other Hervey Bay hostels.

* So, what does spending a gap year travelling and "finding yourself" involve, exactly? Well, the available evidence suggests being an obnoxious loudmouthed prick if you're male, and laughing hysterically and clapping like a seal at everything obnoxious loudmouthed pricks say if you're female, all while consuming a cheap and nasty memory suppressant known locally as "goon".

* Thankfully, things are much more civilised with members of our own group under the tarpaulin on the other side of the party bus, away from the interlopers. Sheltering from the occasional rain showers, we huddle together and chat about places Jenni and I are going to miss out on (Airlie Beach, Noosa, Mission Beach, 1770). This being the world's largest sand island, the stuff gets bloody everywhere - inevitable, I suppose, but crunchy wine still takes some getting used to.

Sunday 8th June

* No amount of wine - crunchy or otherwise - could have made the night which follows bearable. Our exceptionally well-ventilated tent proves no match for the wind and rain, and the chances of getting any sleep are zero when your sopping sleeping bag is lying in a small lake, you're soaked through to the skin and your teeth are chattering like a pneumatic drill. What was that I said about this particular trip being good preparation for Glastonbury?

* Sod's law that the elements relent the instant we've packed everything up. Pretty much the only dry item of clothing I have left is a pair of shorts that I certainly don't remember being THAT short.

* Another day, another lake - but there's not much that's common-or-garden about Lake McKenzie. Surrounded by trees and (where we are) a large area of soft sand, the expanse of water is two distinct shades of blue - turquoise in the shallows and then dark where the bottom drops off steeply into an abyss. It's arguably even more picturesque than Lake Wabbi. Stretching out on the hot sand beneath now blue skies after a cooling dip in the water, the woes of the night are forgotten. Sadly, the obnoxious pricks aren't - they're to one side of us, industriously crafting an area of the beach into a huge cock and balls. Back in the car park Fanny has performed a modern-day loaves-and-fishes trick by somehow rustling up a lunchtime snack for us all when I was under the impression all we had left was cornflakes.





* Turned out nice again, we reflect, watching birds plunging for fish and dolphins swimming and surfacing alongside our ferry as a pair of rainbows arch over the island behind us.

* Back on the mainland Michael manages the impressive feat of being even more dangerous behind the wheel on proper sealed tarmac roads than on what passes for tracks on Fraser Island. Come on now, we've made it this far in one piece - right-hand lane, RIGHT-HAND LANE!

* Everything cleaned and returned down at the depot, it's back to the hostel for showers, huge quantities of life-giving pizza and bad films in the communal area. Having to stay awake before embarking on the next leg of our journey, we endure 'Bra Boys', self-justificatory nonsense about a meathead surf crew from Sydney cowritten by one of their number and narrated by - yes, you guessed it - Russell Crowe (they may come from Maroubra, but someone should probably tell them that their chosen name makes them sound like a troupe of transvestites - presumably not the intended effect), and the tail end of 'Not Another Teen Movie', which doesn't deserve to have words and effort wasted on it.

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Next time: more travel trauma, dolphins and the best kebab in the world.