Days 8 - 15

This last week has been absolutely manic!!

We left Brisbane on Tuesday after spending a fantastic three days with the Hartleys and catching up with Gerard's aussie rules footy mates. The morning we left Brisbane, Richelle from Ibuyeco called and asked if we could attend a park in Brisbane for a media conference regarding our trip. We arrived thinking maybe there would be one or two people there but it was pretty busy with camera crew, presenters, photographers, interviewers etc. It reminded me a little of our wedding day as we were asked to pose for numerous photos, walk along the river holding hands (!) and then to circle the car around the park so that they could take pictures of us driving and the exhaust pipe (just to clarify, the driving the car around the park bit didn't remind me of the wedding day, just the pictures really!) You will be relieved to hear that the Battered Fish behaved herself and I did not stall the car once!

We then headed off to drive to Fraser Island, praying that we would get there before dark so we could set up camp without the dingos finding us! For those of you who haven't heard of Fraser Island (where have you been!), it is an island stretching over 123 kilometres along the southern coast of Queensland and is inhabited by a pure breed of dingos! After picking up our permits, letting our tyres down for sand driving and crossing the ocean on the barge, it was about 4.30pm. We felt quite smug that we might for once set up in daylight as we were camping about 70 kms up the beach which we were told would take about an hour. After checking the tide times (you can only drive on the island in some places 2 hours either side of low tide and you are advised not to travel at all 2 hours either side of high tide), we found that we were three hours away from high tide. No problems we thought. Oh how wrong could we have been! The drive started off well, there was a beautiful sunset over the ocean, which we stopped to take pictures for. It suddenly started to get dark pretty quickly and we were having problems to distinguish washouts on the beach and shadows. Bang, a wave had crept up on us and hit us as we were about to cross a washout. Windscreen wipers on full pelt, we proceeded to then come across Eli Creek, a fast flowing stream where you can float down the creek to the ocean. There was, as we found out, a deep channel. The Battered Fish and the trailer survived but we were pretty scared. (I later found this advice on researching Eli Creek - "Take care when driving through the creek on the beach, as its fast-flowing water can gouge out deep channels. At high tide it's best to take a break and go for a swim until you can cross the creek at the lower end of the beach.") We made it to our camp site 2.5 hours later, bang on high tide and definitely not in the light!! We have made a pact to each other that we will never be as stupid as that again and drive in the dark in places we just don't know.

We woke up in the morning, as usual, intrigued to see where we had camped the previous night. We were in a fantastic shaded spot just back from the beach. I went fo a wander around and found the following notice "Snakes - you might not see them but they will see you. Be careful when walking and always wear sturdy boots." I looked down to see my flip flops (or thongs as the aussies call them) on my feet and walked back to the camp very slowly to change my footwear! Mum - don't worry, I didn't see any snakes in our whole 4 days there. We saw some fantastic sites on Fraser, from beautiful inland pools that are a turquoise colour fringed with startling white sands, to shipwrecks and rocky outlooks, and we were both sorry to leave after this time.

Other than the first nights drive, some funny incidents occured. On my wander around the camp on the first morning, I heard someone saying my name. I looked over and saw Rob, the instructor from our 4WD course, along with some other instructors on their "holidays". They invited us to tag along with them to go around the island. After the previous nights little "incident", we jumped at the chance and spent three wonderful days with them. They call themselves the "RoughIt in Style" club and I soon found out why. On our first drive with them, they asked over the UHF Radio if I liked champagne. I informed them that I am partial to a little and that night, we sat by the camp fire drinking champagne followed by port. What a life!! We became honouree "RoughIt in Style" people and will defiantly keep on channel 16 to see where they are in the future!

When we returned from one drive, we found some "fishos" had camped pretty close to us. I got our the car and was greeted with "G'day, how ya goin'" from one of them, to which I replied " Morning, yes, very well thank you." This same ritual went on each morning! We had a look at their camp and saw 8 cases of beer and one case of Jim Bean for four of them. We asked them how long they were staying as some people stay for weeks on end here. 10 days they replied!

We have now driven to Yeppoon, ready to go over to the Great Keppel Island tomorrow for some snorkeling. Gerard managed to pick up a further 40 litres of WVO from a fish and chip shop and Chinese restaurant in the town. We are running very low on veg oil after our little trip on Fraser with a trailer consumed far more oil than we thought. We will be on Great Keppel for three days and then heading inland to Emerald before heading up to Airlie Beach. If anyone has any WVO for us in these places, please send us an email and we will come and pick it up from you!!

Regarding the WVO, we are still having to filter by hand as the drill that we purchased to filter the oil is not powerful enough. It takes between 30mins - 8 hours to filter 20 litres of WVO, depending on the condition of the oil (if its fatty, it takes longer) and the state of the filters. Gerard is extremely patient!

Righty, the next time I blog will be in a few weeks as we will be out of communication for a while. Hope you are all well and enjoying work!

I have posted some photos of fraser island, our camp and the roughit in style gang!

Rach and Ged x