20:08 Sun.
22 Oct, 2017

Fraser Island

Inskip Point , Australia
13 °C
Showers
12:00 am
5:59 pm

Next day early morning we headed toward our car that we shared with 2 Canadians and 3 British. In our car only 3 of us were driving. The first stage of driving went to the British guy. We soon departed as second in a 4 car convoy on a short drive toward the Fraser Island. There is no infrastructure on the island and the island is some kind of National Park, only people with special permissions can get on the island. To get there we drove our cars onto a ferry and soon after we were on the island.

The briefing previous night and all the signs made us believe we were actually going to have to fight for our lives from the thousands of wild dingoes that live on the island in reality it wasn’t like that.

The whole island is made (covered) in sand (I have no idea how any vegetation can grow on it, but it has vast and dense tropical forests), there are no roads or infrastructure except a couple of small camping areas inside a protective fence.  After driving for a couple of hours alongside the beach we stopped at one such place, where we had lunch. It was interesting to see it surrounded in electric fence, also on the ground, to prevent dingoes from getting inside.

Protection against dingoes. I saw a couple of guys almost walk over the rails, sadly they didn't it would have been hilarious.
Protection against dingoes. I saw a couple of guys almost walk over the rails, sadly they didn’t it would have been hilarious.

After the lunch I took the wheel and drove us to our next destination, to a lake somewhere in the middle of the island. This time we didn’t drive on the beach anymore but turned inside the island. It was a very interesting experience driving on the sand. First I had to get used to of being on the wrong side of the car and to shift gears with my left hand. Contrary to my expectations driving on sand differed quite a lot from driving on the snow. The car didn’t drift so much and you could feel car struggling in the deeper sand. We (and by we I mean others 🙂 ) did manage to get stuck in the sand dunes on several different occasions but in the end they managed to get out every time.

First day we were driving in second car. Second day we went to the first and last day we were in last.
First day we were driving in second car. Second day we went to the first and last day we were in last.

After about 2 hours of driving through the jungle (sadly I have no pictures of it since I was driving)  we arrived to the lake. The lake sits in the middle of island and I forgot why but it has one of the clearest waters I ever saw. It is quite deep (30m) so toward the middle the water gets darker. We stopped for about two hours before heading back toward the beach.

Lake McKenzi. Super clean water on a pure white sand. It was great swimming here.
Lake McKenzi. Super clean water on a pure white sand. It was great swimming here.

After arriving to the beach we drove for another three hours toward our camping site somewhere alongside the beach. Driving on the beach was interesting, waving up and down a bit while avoiding waves and creeks that flow from the center of the island. Toward the end of the drive we saw a particular interesting animal, one which we later learned were really lucky to see, despite all the advertisement beforehand. I’m talking about the dingoes.

Dingoes on Fraser Island
Dingoes on Fraser Island

I think they were looking for some food. From time to time there were people fishing on the beach I think they might have left something there.

Toward the evening we arrived to our campsite. It was again inside a protective fence. We put our stuff into a tent and went to the common area to cook a dinner. There was not much space left in the cars for luggage so we packed extremely lightly, a towel and swimsuit. Despite being quite north it did get very very cold during the night and I was really sorry I didn’t pack another long pants or a sweatshirt. I think most of us had a similar problem, so in the end we just hang around the fire before going to sleep.

Camp fire on Fraser island.
Camp fire on Fraser island. After a couple of hours not much was left from the initial flame, so we were kind of forced to go to sleep if we didn’t want to freeze out in the open.

I don’t think I ever felt this cold, even in Sweden. I actually woke up two times during the night because of the cold. Luckily we survived the night and were able to drive to our next destination in the early morning. We continued our way up the island for couple more hours until we reached   “Indian Head” peninsula. Oh I almost forgot, while driving there I managed to cut my hand somewhere in the car so I had blood all over my trunks, shirt and car as well. It was surprisingly hard to get it off the clothes and a good incentive not to go swim into the sea, which was infested with sharks.

Interesting to say from the top of the Head we were able to see several animals in the bay below. I think we saw a couple of turtles, shark, stingrays, gigantic (non stingy) rays and of course a couple of whales in the distance. I am still amazed by the wild life I was able to witness on our trip. After we continued even further up north where we first saw a small wallaby (smaller kangaroo) in the wilderness and then continued to champagne pools at the seaside.

Finally we turned around and started driving down the island. After couple of hours of driving and waiting for cars behind is to unstuck themselves we arrived to an interesting shipwreck on the beach, near our campsite. The guide wasn’t quite sure about the story behind the ship so he asked us (in the car) to give him some keywords and he made up a story for the others who seemed to believe him. Luckily we were driving with him this day, so we knew the story was made up, hopefully the other days the information he gave us was true. The story was quite funny actually, the guy who stole the ship was wanted pirate for stealing candies from cruise-ships around Australia.

After the shipwreck, the day still wasn’t over and we continued half an hour drive down the beach toward a naturally forming lazy river – the slow running river that you normally find in spas. We had about an hour and half before a sunset to ride the rive, to play some beach volleyball and to sunbathe in the late evening rays.

After the sunset we returned back to our campsite where we cooked some food. After the dinner we went to a short walk to the beach where we watched stars. Because the island is more or less deserted there is no light pollution from big cities and similar. Furthermore since Australia is on the southern hemisphere the stars you can see from there are completely different than the ones we can see in Europe. The view was amazing.

Australian stars
Australian stars

After another night of freezing we had one more interest point to visit. A lake in the middle of giant desert somewhere on the island. After a short drive on the beached we hiked for about 2 hours through the jungle when at one point view completely cleared and giant sand dunes were in front of us. After another 15 minutes of slower hike through the dessert we were presented by a small green lake, that looked like it had 50 crocodiles in it.

It was not full of crocodiles, it was possible to go swim in it although the water was freezing.
It was not full of crocodiles, it was possible to go swim in it although the water was freezing.

We had some time to explore the dunes before heading back to the cars.

Veronika and I
Veronika and I

At the cars we had another lunch break before heading back to the mainland. I had the honour of driving again, about 3 hours over the beach on the island and about half an hour on the paved road on the mainland. It was the first time I drove on the left side of the road.

 

 

18:56 Sun.
15 Oct, 2017

Rainbow Beach

Rainbow Beach , Australia
20 °C
Rain
5:12 am
5:55 pm

This time the trip took us almost 14 hours over night. We were able to sleep a bit on the bus, but we were still tired when we arrived in early morning to our next destination – Rainbow Beach.

Even the pigeons in Australia are more coroful than in Europe.
Even the pigeons in Australia are more coroful than in Europe.

After we unpacked we had a quick snack and then a surfing lesson. We started our trip at a local surfing school where we boarded a 4×4 and drove about an hour down the beach (we were actually driving on the beach) until we reached small peninsula at the end.  We unpacked, some people went kayaking along peninsula while three of us went for a surfing lesson.

Getting ready to surf
Getting ready to surf
Kayaks
Kayaks

Our teacher was an interesting fellow. He looked just like Jesus, and had a funny surfer’s lingo. I suppose you get that if you surf your whole life.  🙂 Anyway he soon thought as the basic idea of surfing, we tried to stand up couple of times on the ground, easy, peace of cake, let’s go into the water.

Once we were in the sea it was a whole new thing. First you have to “catch” the wave by paddling on the surf, then you have to stand – which is like trying to do a push-up where you jump at the end and to top it the board is constantly moving below your legs. Needles to say we had not much luck while trying to stand up, we did get hit in the head by the surf couple of times however. In the end I think Veronika and I each managed to stand up and surf for a bit 2 times each and this was with our instructor pushing us at the beginning, so we didn’t have to paddle.

Surfing Jesus.
Surfing Jesus.

It was very fun to try it, and just after 2 hours we were so tired we could barely hold our surf with the hands let alone do push ups on it in order to stand up.

It was a nice day and just before we left we saw another group of whales who were swimming alongside the beach.

Whales near the beach
Whales near the beach

In the afternoon we returned to our hostel, where we had a briefing for our next adventure on Fraser island.  After the briefing Veronika and I had a dinner in a bar somewhere in town, that the surfer dude recommended, it was the best dinner we had in whole Australia.

Ribs and fries, the best meal we had in Australia.
Ribs and fries
22:51 Sun.
8 Oct, 2017

WhitSundays

Airlie Beach , Australia
26 °C
Partly Cloudy
5:39 am
12:00 am

Friday 7 AM

And so it began, our long long way down to Sydney. First stop was Airline Beach, around 800 km south of Cairns. It took as about 10 hours with a bus, with 2 short breaks in between. The bus was nothing special, no WiFi or chargers in it, at least it was interesting to look through the window and watch the Australian landscape, which is quite different from what we have here in Europe.

In the evening we arrived to Airline beach, where our next adventure awaited. As soon as we disembarked the bus we were greeted by two local Cockatoos who were screaming over our heads, but we had no time for them since we were in a hurry to check-in for our sailing trip in the following days.

The next day we boarded a small/medium? catamaran that will take us sailing around the islands for the following three days. We were joined by about 15 other young people, from Germany, Italy and UK. And were led by Kiwi (New Zeland) skipper and Aussie guide.

Catamaran where we spent next 3 days.
Catamaran where we spent next 3 days.

The boat was surprisingly spacious inside, I think there were 25 or even 30 sleeping spaces on board. Veronika and I were positioned on the left side of the boat, but we didn’t spent a lot of time inside, since it was so beautiful to be on deck and watch the sights around us.

We did variety of things on the boat, we prepared the sails, watched for turtles and other animals in the water, plaid games, talked and so on. A big surprise to all of us was the food. It was plentiful and good. It turned out that the skipper was a very good chef in youth, owning a couple of restaurants but decided later that he wants to do something else in his life.

Food was surprisingly plentiful and despite using simple/normal ingredients it tasted very good. We had one of the best meals in Australia on this boat.
Food was surprisingly plentiful and despite using simple/normal ingredients it tasted very good. We had one of the best meals in Australia on this boat.

We sailed around the islands, stopping at different locations in order to go snorkelling. One of such locations was Whitsundays beach. It is a large beach that goes way inland and is covered by a snow white, very fine sand. All in all it makes the water look nice shade of light blue and to top it off, whole bay is full of stingrays and other large fishes. I even saw a shark, 5 m from me in the water (I was standing in the water at that time). Luckily it wasn’t vicious, only about 3m in length and by the looks of it afraid of me, since it swam away from me as soon as I started to walk toward it.

Withsundays, the famous beach.
Withsundays, the famous beach.

We spent whole morning on the second day here. Swimming, and looking for stingrays. They were plentiful and can almost disappear in the sand – I almost stepped on them 3 times and you don’t want to do that, they can sting you with their enormous stinger on the tail.

Stingray
Stingray, you don’t want to get stung by that tail.

It really was an incredibly beautiful beach and the time just flew by.

The evenings and mornings were especially amazing. It was cold, but the colors of the sky were amazing. I don’t remember ever seeing such a purple color of the sky before.

Sunset at whitsundays.
Sunset at whitsundays.

As I said in previous post in general it is very dangerous to swim anywhere in Australia, you have tons of animals that can kill you, sharks, crocodiles but the most dangerous are jelly fish, that is why we always had a wet-suit on when we went swimming, even if the water was above 24 C.

 

 

22:49 Sun.
8 Oct, 2017

Whales

Airlie Beach , Australia
26 °C
Partly Cloudy
5:39 am
12:00 am

Before going to Australia, I was kind of hoping to see couple of native animals such as kangaroos and koalas, but I was not prepared for what happened. In short we saw almost all animals that we saw in zoo also in nature. It is just an amazing experience, something you can rarely experience in Europe. The highlight of them all were probably whales. In total we saw them over 5 separate occasions (days) through our journey to the south, but the best experience was our first in Whitsundays.

Whale
Whale, blowing some water.

While we were on the white beach skipper spotted something that looked like a whale in the distance. As soon as everyone was on board we chased after them. We were lucky to be in the area when we were (e.g. Australia), since the whales are only here around one month per year, when they migrate north to Arctic with their babies. They spend their time in the south to mate and to raise their children, which is great for us, since they are more active and do different stuff to teach their young ones.

It wasn’t long until we came close to the first group, we stopped about 300 m from them, they didn’t seem to mind us, as they continued to play for about an hour. After we continued our journey and on the way encountered two more groups before stopping in the afternoon for a snorkeling’s session. It was interesting going into the water, because if you dove about 2 m under the water you could hear some singing – a whale singing. I think I managed to record some.

Snorkelling was also great. The water was a bit clearer here and had more animals. Remember how happy I was that I saw a turtle last time? Well here I saw around 5 or 6.

Turtle
Turtle

Me trying to photo a turtle. It's not as easy as it looks. It can hold it's breath much longer than I.
Me trying to photo a turtle. It’s not as easy as it looks. It can hold it’s breath much longer than I. I think in the video above you can see my photographer from this photo. 🙂

After getting out of the water we prepared for our next snorkelling location but a couple of whales close to our boat caught our attention instead. Another mother and child playing about 200 m from our boat. I didn’t mention before, the specie of a whale was Hump whale, and adult one can weight about 30 tons and can be more than 10 m in length. It wasn’t long before we could see what that means for ourselfs. Without further ado, I give you probably the best action photo that I ever witnessed in real life, of course with my luck I missed my shot and only caught the splash afterwards, so here I present the photo taken by our skipper and a splash aftermath taken by me.

This enormous creature jumped out of the water about 200m from our ship. It is hard to tell how large it is. The closes I can say is it felt like a big truck jumped out of the water.
This enormous creature jumped out of the water about 200 m from our ship. It is hard to tell how large it is. The closes I can say is it felt like a big truck jumped out of the water.

Even the splash that followed was amazing.

Humpback jump aftermath
Humpback jump aftermath, at least I got this. :'(

After this we did a couple more dives.

The last morning we had a chance to watch another sunrise early morning, before going for a last snorkel. I can’t believe how fast these 3 days went by, but it was one of my favourite experiences on this trip. Really worth doing it if you happen to be around Airlie beach.

After we got back we had another day left in Airlie to watch some cockatoos. I don’t know why but I find them so funny. You can normally hear them way before you see them and they have this smurky expression on their face all the time. I think I read somewhere that alongside parrots they are the most intelligent birds on Earth. We caught them stealing some food from a nest of another parrot and it was funny when parrot came back he chased them away, but as soon as he left they came back with this funny expression and raided his supplies… poor parrot.

Caught in the act.

On Wednesday evening we prepared for our departure, another thousand kilometres to the south!

19:20 Sun.
1 Oct, 2017

The Great Barrier Reef

Cairns , Australia
21 °C
Mostly Cloudy
5:59 am
6:15 pm

To continue from where we left, third day in Cairns we went to see something that Australia is really famous for – The Great Barrier Reef.

So on Thursday early morning we went to the harbour to board a ship that will take us to the reef which was about 2h sail away. We were around 40 people on the boat and the first thing we did was a briefing about our day and a warning that we should take the motion sickens tablets if we have them (otherwise we could buy them) because the seas can be a little rough.  Half an hour later half of the boat was on the outer deck being sick. To make things worse the waves (about 3m high) made it impossible to go faster so it took as 3 hours to reach our destination. I myself managed to find a good spot behind the ship where I didn’t feel full extent of the motion sickens, the downside of it was that it was outside and I was soaking wet, since the water splashed all over deck.

After reaching our destination we had another briefing about diving. I took a special package which included 2, 45min dives on the reef.

Preparing for our dive
Preparing for our dive

Not long after we were in the water and swimming around the reef. Despite sadly a lot of the reef was damaged by cyclone couple of days before our arrival it was still interesting to see. There were a lot of fishes, and colourful corals, sadly not to the extent as seen on google if you google it.

They say that about 80% of the reef is dead and it will take couple of decades to recover. My first impression after seeing it was quite bad, there was a lot of dead corals on the ground and not nearly as colorful as in these photos (flash does it’s job here). Despite that we did see a lot of animals and fishes. We even saw a turtle and a Nemo fish.

Turtle
Turtle

After we were done with diving we had another bumpy ride back. All in all it was a great experience (minus the boat), it is one of those things that you have to do.

After coming back we had couple of errands to do in the Cairns, before we prepared for an early departure the next day.

Speaking of Cairns, did I tell you they have this gigantic bats there? First time I saw them I was afraid Batman was after us. They had like 0.5m over the wings at least.  Secondly we saw them on a tree, sleeping during the day. It was strange, at first we thought they were some kind of chestnut, but then some of them moved and flapped their wings. Really unique experience.

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