Day 76-78.

Fraser Island.

I was woken by the sweet sweet smell of free pancakes in the hostel. Today I discovered a beautiful thing, peanut butter jelly pancakes! Oh today was starting out so perfect already!! Harps then headed up a TERRIFYING meeting before sending us on our way about deadly dingoes, snakes and spiders. Basically to tell us everything will kill you, well that or kill you in 20 minutes. Swell!

Fraser Island is a sand island so 4x4's are a necessity, this meaning we all get one per group! We loaded them up with our important things - sleeping bag, alcohol, toothbrush, alcohol and.... Oh, alcohol! I was first up driving, naturally, so we plugged our music in and began our adventure heading up the convoy on jeeps behind me!

The trick to driving in sand is floor it. Always floor it. So before boarding the ferry there was a stretch of really soft sand and being the rule follower I am, I floored it! Now, what I don't think he realised was ours was the only one with a turbo. Well we bloody took off! Bump! Bounce! DITCH! Sand. Ploughing straight throw a ditch in the sand, the car didn't blink an eye lid but it did take a nose dive and send a cloud of sand into the air! It then felt like a rally race to the ferry but wow driving on sand is awesome! We drove down the beach to our picnic spot to have lunch before swapping drivers over, out next stop was a walk to Lake Waga. Aussie's tend to exaggerate time lengths, so when he said it would be 45 minute I guessed 25/30 MAX. turns out, it really was 45 minutes! Majority up hill in sand, quite the challenge! The end result was 100% worth it, just before reaching the lake we walked through a desert patch of white sand and at the bottom of a sand dune was Lake Waga.

Our camp was thankfully dingo proofed with an electric fence so we weren't getting mauled during the night at any point soon, well unless you went past this fence, which we may or may not have done... But I'll get to that! The menu of food for the stay was actually pretty good, stir fry was dinner tonight and steak tomorrow! Me and the girls were in charge of the stir fry for tonight, which not blowing my own horn, was awesome despite Lauren making skeptical looking rice... After eating we then cracked out the goon (a disgustingly cheap wine which every traveller is known to drink - 4.5 litres for $11) and began some unusual drinking games...

Whether it was the noise we created or the confusion over our 'German adapted' games, we'd whipped up quite a crowd joining in! Our games were Laber Scheisse (aka bullshit) of which I am terrible because I can't lie about anything the other was Zippy Zippy (aka zoomy zoomy) in which I was zippy so just ended up drinking whenever I felt like it or whenever someone messed up and when playing in German numbers, people mess up quite a lot! Perfect... So this was when my goon coma began, it's commonly known amongst backpackers that goon gives you memory loss and it seriously does! From what I can remember of the night we danced away in the 'Cabana Nightclub' (aka a wooden shack with speakers and an iPod station), I broke my beloved flip flops (RIP, they were all I wore!) and we all thought it would be a hilarious idea to go down to the beach, at night, when there's wild dingoes around... LETS DO IT! I mean no one got caught by a dingo, but apparently I did disappear for a bit and reappear from somewhere when Emmie was screaming my name!? Probably gone to watch the stars, I have an obsession with the night sky lately... Always make my way home in the end though!

After everyone waking up with the hangover from the deepest pit in hell, we shovelled in some breakfast and headed off to 'hangover creek' also known as Eli Creek. I'll tell you something, I certainly does live up to it's name! It's a fresh water creek which is a natural lazy river but the water however is absolutely FREEZING! The only way to tackle it is by jumping straight in and with a queue of hungover backpackers behind you, you really have no other choice! Plunging into the cold water was a shock to the system but it worked a treat! We all casually floated down the river while our guide, Brendan, showcased his 'Upstream Salmon' bit... I'll leave that one to your imaginations, but yes it was exactly what your thinking!

Leaving our hangovers behind we 4x4'd off to Indian Heads which is a look out in between two coast lines. From the top of the lookout towards the ocean we saw a group of turtles diving for food! A manta ray and even some dolphins! We were really holding out for a whale or a shark but unfortunately we saw neither...

Fraser Island is a strictly no sea swimming island, the water is a breeding ground for tiger sharks so not a clever idea to go in! The island is full of lagoons and rock pools for swimming, we were visiting Champagne Pools next. Unfortunately because of the weather the pools weren't very full so a light paddle was all we could do here. This didn't stop the German boys however, who naturally do a photo shoot up on the 'DANGER ROCKS' (as Harps told us could skin you alive... Kind of exaggerated really). Well danger rocks they kind of are after they got pounded by a crashing wave and almost knocked off the rocks! They soon scuttled down off the rock after that bit, thankfully they got the photo they were after! Not to be outdone, me and the girls I'd met on the island took it upon ourselves to out do the Germans and created our own photoshoot! Looking out into the distance, CHECK. Over the shoulder, CHECK. Zoolander's Blue steel, DOUBLE CHECK.

We were very spoilt for dinner after that, not only did the Germans cook for us but we were having steaks with potatoes and salad - not bad for camp food! We then cracked open our alcohol cooler to start round two to discover our alcohol had been stolen! I mean, half of me was relieved because I was still crippled from a goon hangover the other half, well, was still the goon hangover! We split the one remaining can of cider between us, had an obligatory game of Zippy Zippy and a German infused game of Ring of Fire before I snook out early to finally kick my hangover with a night of sleep!

Our third and final day! It's been such a awesome experience but we'd saved the best until last, Lake Mckenzie. If you google Fraser Island this lake will flood your page. It's one of the most beautiful places I've been to on my trip so far. The beach is perfect white sand, the water is the clearest water I've ever seen and the water is also filled with tiny baby turtles!! Unfortunately the drive up there wasn't as beautiful, we'd been lumped with car 4 because apparently no one could drive it and we were OBVIOUSLY the best. So this car had lost first gear, once driving you could no longer use second (the most important gear when on sand!) and it didn't have any lighter/USB port to charge our cameras... Why us!? The speakers however were top notch! Being the pros we are we ragged it to the top and enjoyed a few hours at Lake Mckenzie!

The sand in Lake Mckenzie is apparently a very good exfoliant, so we called this our 'backpacker spa day' and all you saw were people rubbing their entire bodies with this sand, pulling out all kind of moves and shapes in the water. Apparently it's also good for teeth polishing... One girl actually tried it, yeah I'll leave that to her.

I then drove the crappy car to our lunch spot where we ate every scrap of food remaining. I'd just realised I'd done absolutely no car selfies!? Sacrilege!

After lunch it was officially time to head back! Thankfully it was a long chilled out drive along the beach watching the waves crash on one side and seeing dingoes hunting on the other! When coming onto the island we also saw an adorably huge turtle laid on the beach, we drove past it again on the way back, in exactly the same position... Yeah that turtle was dead. We now have photos of a dead turtle. Kind of morbid right? On a brighter note, while waiting for a ferry we spotted a cheeky dolphin just 30ft away from the beach giving us a little show, well we thought it was jumping quite fast... Turns out there were two! TRICKERY!!

We arrived back at the hostel and all I could think about was showering, I hadn't showered for 3 days and I felt disgusting - CHECK IN PLEASE! We had a Welcome Back Party planned so we were getting dolled up and showing everyone what we ACTUALLY look like!

We started the night with our guide playing his own one man band. For every song he created a backing track then played over the top of the recording, pretty impressive if I'm honest! We were then supplied with 'Dingo Juice' - a special drink just for Fraser Island Survivors, it contains orange juice, gin, goon some other types of liquor that I didn't hear after the word gin, it'd be so long! Moving on to ridiculously cheap jugs of cider... Signs of a good night perhaps? Most definitely! We played more obligatory games of Zippy Zippy before saying goodbye to the Germans and me and Claire managed to fit in a late night visit to the beach... Almost. Apparently in Rainbow Beach they don't really do street lighting, so we actually got so far, got really scared and ran all the way back! (Realised in the morning we were literally 10ft away from the beach!?!?).

It's with a heavy heart I say goodbye to the girls from Fraser, the funniest girls I've met so far on my travels, such a shame we won't bump into each other along the way, but have an amazing time in Bali, can't wait to here about it! Thanks for an awesome experience on Fraser!!