Rainbow Beach & Fraser Island

Monday 6^th – We left Noosa today and me and Vicky took the bus to Rainbow Beach for our Fraser Island tour. On the way our driver Toucan took us on a detour to Tewantin State forest which is part of Noosa Hinterland. We went to the Mount Tinbeerwah lookout where we could see the Great Dividing Range.

It was a fun bus journey ad we played a music trivia quiz on the bus (which I won). When we got to Rainbow Beach, I saw Rosie and Candice from my first OzExperience bus and in the evening I also saw a couple of girls from my hostel in Surfers Paradise. It was so nice to see them again.

Tuesday 7^th – Me and Vicky went on a dolphin ferry cruise in the morning where we got to see 2 wild dolphins up close.

Then me, Vicky and another girl went to Rainbow beach in the morning. The beach is named Rainbow beach because the rocks by the beach are multi-coloured with over 50 shades.

At 2pm we had a meeting about our upcoming Fraser Island tour. We were doing a 3day self-drive tag along 4WD tour which meant we had to watch a safety video on driving on sand. It was 45 minutes long and quite repetitive but got us all excited. We were then split into 4 car groups. I was in group 4 and there were 6 others in my group. We sat around a table and filled in a few forms with our driving licence and credit card information. Afterwards, we went on a guided walk to Carlo’s Sandblow. This was really beautiful and unlike anything I had ever seen before.

I tried sandboarding and throwing a boomerang (without much success!)

Wednesday 8^th – Fraser Island day! We were given our food box for the next 3 days.

One guy (Anthony) went to collect the car from the hire company whilst the rest of us made sure we had the right amounts of food in our crate. When Anthony came back we loaded the food and our bags into the car. We only needed to take food, snacks and clothes we would need for 3 days and everything was at the hostel. After loading the car, we drove to the car rental place to pick up camping equipment and sleeping bags. There were 4 cars in total from our hostel, and 27 people split between them. The lead vehicle with the tour leader always had to stay in front. It was a 15 minute drive to the ferry terminal and then 5 minutes on the ferry to Fraser Island. We drove to the shops first where I (again!) bumped into 2 Canadian girls I met in Byron Bay! After that we drove to Lake McKensie. This is a freshwater lake which has really pure spring water.

We went for a swim but it was cold so didn’t spend too long in there. After Lake McKensie we stopped for lunch, then drove to the middle of the rainforest for a short walk through the trees and had a look inside one that was completely hollow so you could see the sky above when stood inside it.

Around 3pm we drove to the campsite which would be our home for the next 2 days. We set up our tents and went for a walk along the beach. Then we all cooked and got to know each other better. It was a really awesome, sociable evening.

Thursday 9^th – We were woken up at 7am so that we could eat breakfast and make our way to Eli Creek. It was really cold at night and quite difficult to sleep so we were all tired but I really wanted to have a go at driving so I drove the 40 minutes to Eli Creek. It was a beautiful drive along the beach. I’d never driven a 4 Wheel Drive before but it was pretty cool.

It was weird to drive on sand but I got used to it. On the way to Eli Creek we stopped to watch a guy fishing for eels on the beach, and we were also stopped in our tracks by a dingo who decided to just stand in front of one of our cars!

When we got to Eli Creek we were told we could walk through it, so we walked about 500m. It was quite deep and we all got wet trousers and shorts as we didn’t have bathing suits on! Then I continued driving us to the Maheno shipwreck.

Apparently there are 5 levels of the ship under the sand, which was quite hard to believe. We drove on a bit further to a campsite for lunch. After lunch I passed the keys over to another member of my group and we went to the Champagne Pools, where we hung out and played some frisbee. After the Champagne Pools, we drove to Indian Head.

We walked uphill to a lovely spot where we saw stingrays and a whale, the scenery from up there was absolutely amazing. It was getting dark so we drove back to our campsite for dinner. It was such a fun night and we all had a lot of laughs!

Friday 10^th – We packed up camp and headed straight to Lake Walby. It was a 40 minute walk from the car park to the lake and sandblow. Unfortunately whilst walking I tripped and accidently got sand in my camera lens causing it to break. L The sandblow was beautiful but not as nice as Carlo’s Sandblow on Rainbow Beach. Afterwards we had lunch (hot chips which was a treat!) and drove for 1 hour and a half back to Rainbow Beach.

Saturday 11^th – I decided to stop in Hervey Bay for a night to relax after the hectic week at Rainbow. It was pouring with rain the whole day so I didn’t see much of Hervey Bay, however I did get to the shopping centre and buy a new camera which was a relief! I found out later that my friends from Fraser Island were only staying at the hostel opposite but as we didn’t have each other’s numbers (only facebook), we couldn’t arrange to meet up.