Fraser Island

What an incredible week! Such a fun study week (even though there was no studying involved what so ever...which is probably why it was so remarkable! A group of 32 of us left SCU early Monday morning to go to Fraser Island, it took 3 bus trips, a ferry ride, and a train-ish mobile to get us to our resort, but we finally got there after about 8 or so hours of travelling. The island was much different than I had anticipated, but still marvellous. On Monday night we all had a big dinner then just relaxed out by the Dingo Bar.
Tuesday we woke up early to get off on our bus by 8:00 to go explore the island. We had a hilarious tour guide named Karl. He totally made the trip all worthwhile. The bus rides were interesting to say the least, the entire island is sand, there are very minimal roads, and the only roads are actually those directly located by the 2 resorts. All other ‘roads’ are sand, and it is basically like you are riding a roller coaster. So Tuesday we made a few stops on the island, the first of those was Basin Lake, it was a hidden lake down at the bottom of a huge sand dune. The second spot we stopped was Lake Birabeen, which was gorgeous! It is a fresh water lake which allowed for crystal clear water! After we had lunch we headed back to our resort, which was the Kingfisher Bay Resort, in case any of you are wondering, it was really nice, even in the backpacker portion! We all hung around the pool at the resort for the remainder of the night, after eating an aussie version of a taco dinner, I’ll tell you they have a lot to learn!
Wednesday was a big day! We hit a ton of different spots on the island and I even went on a spur of the moment airplane ride over the island! We started our day at the Hammerstone Sandblow, which was really pretty and different than most of the island, which is completely covered by trees. After we all took a few pictures there we left and went for a nice drive along the beach, which is also their local ‘highway’, which is where I, along with a few others, got conned into going on a plane ride, the pictures made it all worth it though, I was able to capture most of the island from above, pretty sweet! Once we landed we stopped at the Maheno Shipwreck, took a few pictures by that then we were off to the Champagne pools, on our way we were able to see Indian Head rock. The Champagne Pools were absolutely gorgeous, I took way too many pictures there but they were all worth it, I had never seen anything like these pools before! Once we had gone for a swim and took plenty of pictures we headed back towards the bus for our delicious chicken wrap lunches, probably my favourite meal over the week, or at least the best balanced! After lunch we headed towards our final stop for the say, Eli Creek, which was absolutely freezing! We followed Karl up the creek on a path way, then we floated down it using our hands to push us down faster, it was a great triceps workout! After our ‘workout’ we laid out on the sand to catch some much needed rays before devouring some delicious cookies and coffee! We then headed back towards the resort to chill at the Dingo Bar for the night.
Thursday was the last day of our tour with Karl, and by far the prettiest day yet. The skies were blue and the sun was shining, we hit up Lake Mackenzie, which is absolutely gorgeous! I wish the pictures did it justice, we spent about 3 hours lying on the beach and some of us even swam across the lake! Between the white sand and the crystal clear water I’d have to say that this was my favourite spot over the whole trip! Once Karl got all of us to finally leave the beautiful beach we were off to Central Station to learn some history about the island, then we went for a subtropical rainforest walk, which was actually really sweet, again I wish that the pictures would do justice to all the amazing plants we saw, and creatures might I add. After our nice walk we were headed back to the bus where we had to say our goodbyes to the amazing Karl and head back to the resort.
Friday, was our day of leisure. After we ate breakfast we were off to the pool to sit and relax for about 6 hours while working on our tans! It was so wonderful to lay back and relax in a comfortable lounge chair! We were on our own for lunch so most of us went down to the Sand Bar and indulged in large portions of nachos, and burgers. After lunch we went back out towards the pool for a few more hours, afterwards we headed down to the dock to watch a beautiful sunset. It was the perfect last day of vacation!
Saturday we started on our long adventure back to Lismore. After 3 bus rides, a ferry, and about 8 hours later we were back at our apartments wondering how the week went so quickly... the saying that time fly’s when you’re having fun is a proven point, not only from my Fraser Island trip but from my whole stay in Australia.
As for updates from SCU, nothing new has really happened since my return, I’ve been working/procrastinating on a paper which is due tomorrow, I just finished up editing it. Now I will sit with my cup of tea and start reading a new book, and await the beginning of the week, to see where my adventures will take me!
How could I forget, one small thing did happen this week, I’ve changed my flights home, I now have a stopover in Fiji from June 5-8! I am so excited for this trip. I will be going with a group of great girls I have met here on our way home, as one last celebration of our times here in Australia! Basically it is our way of postponing our goodbyes, why not postpone them in Fiji! I will be returning to Chicago early in the morning on June 9th now instead of the 6th, but enough talk about coming home, I’ve got 7 weeks of life in Australia left, plenty of time for more adventures! AND two of those weeks will be with my parents! I can’t wait for them to get here!!!!!!
Off to another week, hopefully time slows down a little bit, I feel like someone has put my life on fast forward.