Our last day on Fraser Island was bittersweet. We had stayed up pretty late the night before, drinking and trying to finish all the assignments due in our workbook (damn that dune transect! It seriously took ages!) and the hand-in time was 9am sharp. However, since it was our last day and after 9am nothing more was due.....we had the entire morning and afternoon to relax by yet another lake on the island.
This lake was probably the most beautiful lake of the entire trip. It's called Lake Wabby, and again, it's situated amongst some of the most incredible sand dunes. We drove to the base of the dunes, hiked up them and then spent a couple hours swimming in the freshwater lake. It's at this point that I should introduce the "bogans." Basically, bogans are a slang term for hicks - out here in Australia, there are different types of bogans, all easily identified by specific characteristics. Example: the Coastal Bogan usually has a tattoo of the Southern Cross somewhere on the back, arm, chest etc. The Inland Bogan is depicted with a large, black cowboy hat and a suped-up truck. Anyways, at the lake, there were a couple bogans present who were having the time of their lives checking out the girls in our group. So, one of our tutors, Scott (the one who told us all about classification of bogans) asked them if they were "having a nice perv." They got mad, left, and unbeknownst to us, unlocked our hub caps on the cars so we couldn't engage in 4WD. This meant that on the way to the ferry to get home, 2 of our 5 cars got stuck in the wet sand! We had to push them out, which was an adventure in itself. I've got a video which I will have to show you all at some point of how life is in the back of one of these vehicles. SUPER bumpy and quite the Indiana Jones-esque trip!
The ferry ride back to the city was pretty uneventful. The only surprise was finding out on the other end that we weren't taking a bus back to Brisbane, but the 4WDs. So 6 of us piled into the back of Claire's car, and made hilarious 30-minute movies on people's cameras....mainly us singing oldies, rap music and pretending to be bogans. It was excellent.
We arrived into Brisbane about 7:30pm, giving me just under 3 hours turnaround time before I had to head back on a bus to drive up the coast to Gladstone for the Heron Island trip. I quickly caught a cab home, changed out the dirty clothes, left them in a pile on my bed, grabbed dinner and headed back to the uni to get on another coach bus for an overnight drive. Whoopee!
Heron Island Day 1
The overnight bus to Gladstone was a disaster. I couldn't sleep at all, despite popping 2 gravol, and the seats were super uncomfortable. We made it into Gladstone, the nearest city to the ferry, around 6am and stopped at MacDonald's for brekkie. We then had a 4 hour wait before the ferry departed, so luckily, we were able to crash on the grass next to the ferry terminal and sleep for a couple hours. It's sad to say the grass was more comfortable than the bus seats!
The ferry ride over to Heron Island is the worst thing I have ever endured. It's a 2 hour, bumpy ride across a rough channel....I'm pretty good at sea, but this trip - I got really sea sick and my breakfast did not make it over to the island. It only made it about halfway before ending up overboard to feed the fish. Disgusting. I wasn't the only one - about 10 in our group did the same thing.
Upon arrival though, depsite feeling sick and tired, seeing the island made me quite happy. It's this little island in the middle of nowhere. The water is incredibly blue and clear, the wildlife is amazing and there is nothing on the island except a small resort and the research station. There is no electricity, power or water supplied to the island, so they have to recycle their own sea water and use generators for all things electric. Food is delivered once a week via barge....it truly felt like a completely different world from the mainland! I was so stoaked to get marks for spending the next 5 days on this island, snorkeling around and relaxing on beaches.....
After a huge buffet lunch, which was only an indication of more amazing catered meals to come, we had a quick debreif on safety rules etc then headed down to the shed to pick up our snorkel gear for the next 5 days. We were given colorful fins, a wettie, as well as goggles and snorkel. After sorting out our gear, we donned it all and hopped into the harbour for our first snorkel of the trip.
Nothing really exciting was seen on the trip, except for a couple sea turtles in and around the shipwreck that we swam to. It was here that I had a true "my god I'm in Australia moment," thinking about how cool it was to have seas turtles swimming beneath me and a shipwreck to my left. I felt like I was in a live version of Finding Nemo!
Our snorkel was a short one since the sun was setting, so we packed it in around 6pm, had some dinner and then headed to bed for a nice long sleep. I had been camping on the ground the past couple nights, so the bunk beds looked super inviting. I think I fell asleep in record time, and slept solidly until the next morning when the bell rang for breakfast!
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