I was once again up at the crack of dawn this morning. It's probably the fact I was camping and generally speaking the light wakes me up. There was heavy rain during the night which made the night a little noisy, and when exiting the tent I was greeted with a little shower of water from the damp tent. I accidentally left my sandals out overnight, mainly to dry, but the rain probably helped as it washed all the sand off.
Breakfast this morning was just me eating corn flakes out the box, as there wasn't much else left other than noodles, which I am taking with me. That way it will force me to cook in a hostel at least once! After a few solo games of pool whilst everyone was sleeping, a few people awoke although much of my group had already last night decided to have lie ins. I was leaving early as I booked the morning bus out of Noosa.
After a few issues collecting my deposit and being told I didn't tell them I was leaving in the morning, they were those kind of people running the place, I was finally on my way leaving the sandy camp through the woods back onto the road. About half an hour later we arrived at the bus station where after a swift turnaround I was on my way to my next location, Rainbow Beach. One of the recurring features of the greyhound buses is the drivers speech throughout. I've had drivers give running commentaries about the scenery, information about roads, and today it was a lecture about how it is a legal requirement to wear a seatbelt!
About an hour into the journey we stopped at this service station called the Matilda roadhouse which had a massive kangaroo outside, the mascot! I was quite relieved to stop here because it didn't just give me a food stop, but also access to WiFi for the first time in three days! After getting myself re updated with everything again we were back on the road and by half 12 we arrived and I checked straight into my hostel Frasers on Rainbow. A night before and after my tour of Fraser Island was included in the packages price I bought for Fraser Island. Like I always do the first thing I did was just dump my stuff and explore the area, although it was a little small with just a parade of shops, few houses and the backpackers area. I think Rainbow Beach is a purpose built gateway to Fraser Island.
A short while later after taking in the views down the beach and looking in the little shops, I headed back to the hostel ready for a briefing of my trip to Fraser Island. My first impression of the group was German! We basically had to watch a video about car safety as we are touring the island using 4wd. Unfortunately I can't drive so I will be a passenger for the trip whilst I put my trust in the people who can drive! We also got told about everything ranging from camping to waste disposal with everything in-between. It was a very repetitive video. The other major message was about being dingo safe and not wandering off.
Apparently they have wild dingoes which hunt in packs so we were told how to beat a dingo!
After the video we got a short speech from this aboriginal guy telling us about the massive spiders and the deadly snakes on the island, as well as some true stories of disasters. I think he was just trying to scare us! We were then given a copy of our food for the coming days as well as a form signing ourselves away with all the small print. We were also instructed to pack light and not bother about looking good each day!
By the time the briefing was over I headed over to travel bugs to book the remaining part of my tour to Cairns. I'm arriving at Cairns a week early now, although I've booked a couple of tours out of town! Hopefully everything runs smoothly until then now as there is a lot of reconfirmations I have to do! By now it had stopped raining so I decided to walk to the sand dune for a quick cache. Despite the sand being wet I got brilliant views over towards Fraser Island just as the sun was setting. I walked back along the beach, dark at this time and managed to find some free WiFi en route which made me very happy!
It was then back to the hostel where I relaxed on my bottom bunk which I crave in the hostels, and also my personal power socket next to bed! This was too good to be true however as the hostel suffered a power cut which meant my phone didn't charge fully, something I wanted before a three day tour! I left my phone in the dead socket however in the hope it would return, and before long fell asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment