Look out for the drop bears

Noosa

After watching several episodes of Breaking Bad we arrived in Noosa and crashed at the hostel. The next day we decided to go and check what tours were available for Fraser Island, and ended up spending $1,200! But for that we got 3 tours, a pub crawl and accommodation for the rest of the east coast sorted, so not too bad.

Our bank accounts were empty so we were desperate to do something that was free, so we headed to the local national park, which was really pretty.

Fraser Island

We booked ourselves onto a 4x4 bus tour called Cool Dingo’s, which would take us around Fraser Island for 2 days and also give us a bed to sleep in. You can camp on the island which lots of people do, but it was fully booked up and we didn’t want to get eaten by dingoes in the night. The dingoes look a bit like normal dogs, but have been known to eat babies and a man’s finger before, so can be quite dangerous!

We met our group at Lake Mackenzie on the island, and were led by a guide who looked exactly like John Lock off Lost. After swimming in the lake we jumped on the bus and went for a trek around the forest, where we stopped at a creek which had the clearest and probably purest water that we've ever seen. The sand in the river bed was made up of 98% silica, which sounds boring but it is pretty cool as it absorbs sound so you can’t actually hear the water running. Weird! We were also warned about drop bears, a type of bear that hangs in trees and attacks people by jumping out of trees and biting their necks. Stupidly we lapped it up and thought that they were real, only to realise later on that the killer koalas are a made-up aussie joke.

Lake McKenzie

Coincidentally the weekend that we were there was Easter, which sucked because the Aussies have weird alcohol laws on Good Friday where nowhere is allowed to sell or serve alcohol (nothing ‘good’ about that!). Luckily we were pre-warned so stocked up on some lovely Goon beforehand, but not everyone knew about it so didn’t bring their own. Luckily the bar on the island did stay open (shh) and we played drinking games with some Germans who taught us the very worst swear words in German.

We had an early start the next day so dragged our bodies onto the bus, only for it to break down in the rain! Luckily someone drove a replacement over to us. We headed from the middle of the island out to the coast and we hammered it along the beach, dodging the waves to our next stop: Eli Creek. We floated down the water and Marc decided to take his ‘waterproof’ camera in, only for it to break and the screen to stop working for the next few days, so he had to just guess what he was taking photos of.

Minutes before Marc's camera broke

After snapping some pictures from our next stop, Indian Head, we raced over to the Champagne pools; given the name as the waves crash over the rocks the foam fills the pools which were pretty awesome fun. We also stopped off to see some shipwreck on the beach too!

Day two ended and we were supposed to get the ferry back to the mainland but the boat left without us, with the next one not due to leave until 11pm. Luckily, the people organising it were really apologetic and made up for it by giving us free pitchers of beer to help pass the time! Yaaay!